Thread: Media PC

Originally Posted by DJ Mr. White

If you want Blu-ray, get a dedicated drive for it; the blu-ray drive on the PS3 isn't the highest of quality.

Yeah, more saying not as important right now since have one and really don't use disks that much, excellent point though

Sent from my phone like a boss!

Either go with an AMD Llano or an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3. Stick with newer technology. I highly recommend the Llano series CPUs as they are inexpensive compared to even the cheapest Core i3 systems, and they are exactly what you really need for an HTPC.

AMD A8-3850 Llano Desktop Processor Review - Can AMD compete with Sandy Bridge? | PC Perspective

Check out that article from PCPER. You can see that the Core i3 beats the Llano at a lot of stuff, but not when it comes to graphics, which is probably most important on your HTPC.

Originally Posted by DJ Mr. White

If you want Blu-ray, get a dedicated drive for it; the blu-ray drive on the PS3 isn't the highest of quality.

Just curious... what do you mean by saying the PS3 isn't the highest quality? Isn't it native 1080p playback? I am just wondering as I owned a PS3 a few years back, but never played any Bluray movies on it to compare to my HTPC.

Can't find the article, but it's quality is only as good as a low-end standalone blu-ray player. They did that to keep costs from being too high (although that's debatable). It's not bad, but if you want the best quality, standalone is what to buy. Standalones are also much more affordable nowadays.

Here you go, complete HTPC for $300, use the hdmi out straight to your receiver.
Newegg.com - lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 (40812HU) Nettop Intel Atom D525(1.80GHz) 2GB DDR3 250GB HDD Capacity NVIDIA ION graphics Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit


it doesn't say if it has a blueray drive or not.

I'd worry about the Atom processor being able to decode HD video well enough.

Originally Posted by WileECyte

I'd worry about the Atom processor being able to decode HD video well enough.

The ION platform has an HD decoder. Awesome.

I was shopping little HTPC boxes and in the reviews of almost all of them there were people complaining it would not do 1080, and toher reviewers commenting that you need to select the ION decoder and not software or whatever. So as long as it is configured right, an Atom with the ION platform should do 1080.

Looking at that box specifically though, I would prefer the dual core Atom ... people's reviews say they had trouble playing HD and a reviewer said he played HD fine as long as nothing else was running. It is a single core...

The Intel ATOM processor is garbage. They will do fine for a net book, but not enough horsepower for an HTPC. Trust me... go with the Llano platform. You won't be sorry.