After some research on the WD TV Live and the Patriot. I have found that building a HTPC would be the way to go. The WD can't play 1080p with 30fps (only 1080i). The Patriot doesn't support FLAC. Little things like this bother me. I want to build a PC that can play 1080p mkvs and 1080p bluray discs seemlessly. The only problem is I do not know what does most of the work. Is it the GPU or the CPU?? I will be running windows 7 and be using VLC (most likely) as the player. This will be on a 47" Vizio TV. I'm not sure what I need though. I know I don't need over the top Quad core with top of the line GPU. Is a dual core with a decent intergrated GPU good enough? Please help. I don't even know how the GPU and CPU decide whos going to do what. Thanx guys
I can verify that nvidia ion based PCs are capable of playing 1080P video from mkv files as well as blu-ray. I just recently purchased a zotac motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500036&cm_re=zotac-_-13-500-036-_-Product) and I have it setup running Windows 7 and using XBMC to watch my videos. As far as the processing, most of the work is performed by the GPU. In fact, flash doesn't work perfectly on this system because the CPU tries to do all the processing instead of handing it off to the GPU. I'm expecting this to be fixed as new updates are added to flash.
The Acer Revo w/ xbmc and linux can do 1080p video well afaik. No disc drive though. There's a pretty extensive stickied thread on avs forums about building a htpc...
Intel core i3 and DH55 board will do everything you need it to do with flying colors and you can get it in a small form factor due to the graphics being on the chip. As long as you don't want to add a bunch of cards to it you can even get that on an ITX setup. The gpu will do most of the work if the software you use supports hardware acceleration however players like vlc use mostly the cpu to playback content. Players like TotalMedia Theatre 3 will put all the decoding on the gpu as long as you have hardware to support it. I just replaced a core 2 duo t6600 & a nvidia 8600GTS with an Core i3 and DH55 board and it's been great actually flawless...
To run HD content smoothly all you really need is a decent single core / half decent dual core processor and a video card (integrated or other wise) that has UVD (Universal Video Decoder) or PureVideo. This will alleviate the processing power from the CPU over to the GPU for applications that support it and should be able to handle it for those which don't. Just make sure you have all the necessary codecs setup correctly to maximise performance.
