Can a Nettop work as a Media Center PC?

[jcarson]

Here are my needs..

I want to find out if a nettop can run windows 7 media center, that will stream to an xbox. I will never watch the video directly on the nettop. The tuners to be used are a networked HDHomerun and a USB TV Tuner. Can the nettop handle the throughput to record the QAM HD signals and then stream them to the xbox? I basically want to set up windows media center on it, then just access it and control it from my xbox, keeping the nettop tucked away in a back closet. Oh, all connections are wired.

Any thoughts, or landmines here when trying to use this setup? Is this the right forum to ask?

MSI has a real cheap one right now.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-044-_-Product

This work?

 

[simonizor]

I really don't see that happening. I'd check the minimum system requirements on your USB Tuner. If the netbook does meet those requirements, that doesn't mean that it will work. I'm fairly sure that the 360 requires a pretty decent computer to transcode the video that you are streaming into a format that it can work with.

 

[bearxor]

It will totally be fine.

The computer doesn't touch the video as it comes in or goes out in this case. QAM or ATSC is written directly to the hard drive. I have an old Opteron 165 (1.8 DC) and it can record 5 streams at once (4 QAM, 1 cablecard) and playback two (main TV + 360 extender) at the same time with no hiccup.

I don't normally suggest running the OS and recorded TV off the same drive, but if you get a decent enough HD (7200 RPM 16MB cache is fine) then you shouldn't have a problem. If it hiccups you could always go eSATA.

That machine might not be able to playback 1080p MKV's or anything, because of the Intel video card, but it can definitely handle 720 or 1080 television. Go for it.

 

[Emulex]

just get a refurb quad core man. if you need to transcode you'll be so much happier. you can multi-purpose the nas to do many things at once and never think about running out of ram/cpu/gpu. hdhomerun can pump 70-100meg (the new cablecard ones). you'll need some muscle to move that in and out at the same time. if you need transcode360 - skip nettop completely