The best computer-tv setup for your living room
Here, i am posting this to remind myself of how to setup my media center at home, so it can be a bit messy
Kodi (XBMC) seems to be the only real competitor to Windows Media center, in my case, i feel it is much better than Windows Media Center.
Hardware
The raspberry PI 2 (With 1 GB ram) can function as the hardware with it’s HDMI output
Or
An old PC, with cooling switched to passive watter cooling (Cost me around $40 on ebay for the parts) to get rid of the noisy fan, and with the hard drive replaced by a bootable linux flash stick (Also to reduce noise)
Please note that the analogue (D-SUB / VGA) cable is just as good as HDMI, analogue signal over such a short distance is not a problem, so you can connect the D-SUB to your TV or the HDMI cable, you will not notice the difference. But you will need to connect audio to external speakers or something.
The disadvantage of the old PC method are
The cooling system costs half as much as a raspberri PI ! alot of money i would say.
The PC is bulky compared to the PI
Draws much more power than the PI
The advantages
You already have that old PC
You can use Kodi on Windows, then use your IPAD as a keyboard and mouse (No such app exists for linux yet)
You can use it for more general purpose purposes later on
It’s eithernet port is not provided through USB like the PI
You can have much more RAM on it
You can add an input card to it and connect your home receiver to it
You can install hard drives inside (Remember to make them spin down when not in use) and then use it as NAS
You can install an IR receiver on the com port and use LIRC to program any remote you have
It can play DVDs (If it has a DVD player)
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Plugins that i like for Kodi