Athlon XP 1600+ w/ 512 mb ram: strong enough to run hardwired UPnP media server?

[blackdogdeek]

i have an old Athlon xp 1600+ which has 512 mb ram. it will be connected to my router via ethernet. i have an appletv2 which is also connected to the router via ethernet and has xbmc installed on it.

if i have a video file on the athlon rig, will it be able to serve the video without stuttering or buffering if:

a. it doesn't require transcoding
b. it does require transcoding

thanks!

 

[magomago]

what is the power draw? is it worth digging up an old system for this purpose? maybe it is, but i would like to see a cost analysis.

that said if its not transcoding you are prolly fine. for the latter, just test it and see. is the video HD? if it is, i doubt it...

 

[ch33zw1z]

Like mago said, this will depend on the video. Non-HD, you're probably fine. HD, probably not.

 

[Lotheron]

You could jailbreak the AppleTV and put XBMC which will remove the need to transcode anything for the most part as XBMC can play virtually any file. At that point, the computer is just serving files which it should more be able to handle.

 

[blackdogdeek]

the video is 480p at most so not HD.

You could jailbreak the AppleTV and put XBMC which will remove the need to transcode anything for the most part as XBMC can play virtually any file. At that point, the computer is just serving files which it should more be able to handle.

i already have a jailbroken appletv with xbmc. that will be the upnp client in this set up.

thanks everyone for the info. i'll test it out and see how it goes.

does anyone have any recommendations for lightweight upnp media servers? i put mythbuntu on this rig but i can't seem to figure out yet how to get the media server to be visible on the network.

 

[VinylxScratches]

I was running a P4 1.4GHz with 512MB of ran Debian + Twonky Media server and it worked fine for me. I recall playing Office Space in HD and it was good too. This was all streamed to my Xbox 360.