Digital Music Server advice

[Paul Mather]

On Jul 5, 2013, at 12:55 PM, John Rennie <hawkfan at RATSAUCE.CO.UK> wrote:

> I use XBMC as my media player (same as on the Android tablet). This is
> available for OSX as well as Windows, or again you could use the player
> built into OSX. The only drawback is that you won't get a 2010 Mac Mini
> for under $400, not even on ebay. In the UK they go for around £350,
> which is around $525. However if you can stretch that far it's by far
> the best solution.
> 
> If the cost is a problem there are various cheaper media PCs around,
> and there are a lot of Android based systems appearing. A friend has
> been using the Ouya (http://www.ouya.tv/) as a media player and it's
> only $99! It's not a patch on a Mac Mini though - buy the Mac and if
> necessary sell your grandma.


Or, instead of selling Granny, buy a Raspberry Pi Model B (at $35 it's cheap enough to buy a spare... or two[*]).  I've been using one with Raspbmc (XBMC) for a couple of months now and really like it.  It's been rock solid, and, heck, the Raspberry Pi HDMI implementation even supports HDMI-CEC so you can even pass through commands from your TV remote control to it (meaning you can control XBMC using your regular TV remote).  The Raspberry Pi has a tiny footprint (about the size of a credit card or thereabouts) and only draws about 3.5 W of power, so it's really easy to hide away and won't break the bank with power consumption. :-)

Or, you could buy some low-cost fanless Atom-based tiny PC.

Cheers,

Paul.

[*] Or, with a central XBMC database and networked media storage, you could, in theory, buy a few and deploy them around the house on other TVs so you can start watching something in one room and finish watching it in another.