Zbox

H

hallohej

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 14, 2009
Messages
200
any one know any thing about them??

they worth there money when u just want some thing simple?

most of the come with out OS, what is the best to trow on them? just a win 7 64 bit? and trow in as many ram as possible?
 
In general, the Zbox's are great pieces of low cost hardware. If you decide to go the Linux route, get one w/ an Nvidia ION chip to save some driver headache. If you decide to go with windows get the Zacate E-350 Zbox for some added CPU horsepower. For a HTPC uses your major limitations w/ these platforms is that Tuners are hard to add if you want to go with MCE. Just any MCE USB tuner will eat your CPU alive w/o a built in MPEG4 Encoder. Gaming will also be a somewhat limited experience if you desire to do that. Finally If you have Netflix, you wont be watching your content in 1080p since Silverlight doesn't have hardware acceleration.
 
well my plan with that was to use it as a pure medie center streaming all from my NAS .avi .mkv 1080p ofc and stuff like that.

not gameing or any thing.

well it do this for me?
 
Right now I am running an E-350 system, that I have had for about 9 months. I have really had a great experience with it Running XBMC, Boxee (Before they abandoned the PC version), and Chrome Browser for web video with my IOGear Keyboard+Trackball. Two days ago I just ordered the the new G530 Celeron 2.4ghz Sandy Bridge w/ an ASROCK mATX H61 board. Together they cost about $130 (not much more than a Zacate setup) and use not much more juice than the Celeron. Media Center takes a bit of time to get going on my E-350, and I needed some Card slots to do TV recording.

The E350 is a low powered, low cost solution to HD Video with a few minor limitations that are really not that hard to deal with. I would stay with my Zacate board if I didn't want to Record TV w/ MCE, and satisfy my desires to tinker with things.
 
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