What Are My Options For A HD Media Center?

Everton | Mar 16, 2007 | View Comments


EVA8000

My regular readers know that I love my modded Xboxs running XBMC. However, the problem I’m facing currently is that my poor old Xboxs don’t have enough power to handle HD content.

I bought a Xbox 360 in 2005 for two reasons, to play Halo 3 and to get a new HD media centre.  Unfortunately, it looks like the modding community are never going to crack the 360 and Halo 3 still isn’t out yet, so my 360 is gathering dust under my TV.

Which means I still don’t have the HD media center I desperately want. What do you think are my best options are for getting one? I read about the Netgear EVA8000 yesterday that can stream HD content. Do you think this will be my best bet, or is there a better device on the market? Or, should I hang in there with my 360 or maybe even buy a Playstation 3 which is showing more modding promise?

Another alternative is to connect my PC directly to my Plasma HDTV. I’m hoping to move to a bigger flat this summer so I might be able to put my PC in my living room and hook it up directly to my TV with a very long cable.


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About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.

  • perspectoff
    Are you pining away for a Sony Betamax, old man?

    Perhaps your kids could help you set up LinuxMCE.

    Or maybe you better stick with a DVD player or TiVo.

    Complex computers are not for everyone, you know.
  • Your reply got me thinking about building a compact media center PC to go under my TV. My main PC can deal with all the storage, and I could take 2GB out of my main PC and put it in the new one. But I'd still need a mobo, CPU, TV card, graphics card and sound card so it'd get quite pricey just to watch HD.

    Getting a EVA700 or 8000 looks like my best bet so far, even though I'd need to get a HDMI switch as well as I only have one on my receiver.
  • I have an old Shuttle pc (P4, 1gb Ram) connected up to my Samsung LCD tv which I use to watch videos including HD, it has no problems doing this, especially since I don't have too much installed which for work better than connecting up a main pc that might have lots of stuff running in the background.

    I'm currently looking at getting the optical surround sound output working so that I can get rid of my old dvd player (which doesn't upscale at all) and just use the HTPC to play all my dvds - I can't use the Xbox 360 since only about half my dvds are region 2.

    I'm not sure how good these separate boxes are in comparison for streaming content though.
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