What's the status of ION / mplayer / XBMC?

[Fackamato]

I'm asking this question because I'm putting together a new PC soon, specs below:

Mainboard & CPU: ASUS AT3N7A-I, Intel®Atom330, nVIDIA ION
RAM: Crucial DDR2 BallistiX PC6400 2GB KIT
Case: Antec MicroATX Cube NSK1300
HDD: Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA2
HDD OS: Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB
HDMI Cable, HDMI M-HDMI M, 2.5m, v1.3

Is the best option to go with Windows7 + XBMC, or any up-to-date Linux distribution?

[Ubuntaqua]

Originally Posted by Fackamato

I'm asking this question because I'm putting together a new PC soon, specs below:



Is the best option to go with Windows7 + XBMC, or any up-to-date Linux distribution?

I've built almost the same system (Zotac IONITX-D-E, 2.5 To hard drives total, 4 GB RAM) with the same objective : having an almost noise-less low-power system for video HD display. Aside from RAM and HDD, this is almost exactly the same as any other ION nettop currently sold everywhere so, yes I guess it's a good bet. It will be slow on CPU though. I receive the parts today and will build it over the week-end.

EDIT : my (older) 8600GT handles h264 perfectly with XBMC, smplayer or patched xine . The only missing bits of flexibility are Gstreamer and VLC.

[Lithorus]

AFAIK XBMC under Windows doesn't do hardware accelerated h264.

[dk75]

I have ZOTAC 330-IONITX-A-E and with PPA XBMC 9.11alpha2 and nVidia 190.42 VDPAU works for me.