Today I will try to answer a question posted on the title of this article. It is not easy to give a simple and short answer as it really depend what is parameters may be most important to you. Some of people may want a small form factor computer. Some of other may want a fanless and completely silent media box. And some of other may want to get best possible quality of movies they watch. I will try to satisfy all of given types of people. I will start from first of these needs.
Small form factor HTPC?
First of points given on the beginning of this article I have told that many of you may want a small form factor computer. Moreover I have even put it in the article title. Why it may be so important? Because no one want a huge computer standing near their high class Full HD TV. It do not look good. Much better are little media centers or even these that are invisible (VESA Mounted). It is why we will choose a Mini-ITX form factor computer. It can look really good in a small computer chassis or be hidden on the back of your TV.
Should it be fanless?
You may ask what is a difference between fanless and traditional PC? It is huge difference! When you watch a great movie you really do not want to hear your computer. It may really disturb you and make watching movies a really bad experience. Some of people never watch anything on their HTPC as it is too loud! Even if it won't be fanless it should be very quiet!
Do you need Full HD playback...?
Yes you do! More and more movies are coming in Full HD 1080p quality and in next year or two 100% of new movies will be available only in this format. It is why you want a media center capable to play it! So it should have powerful CPU (but it would not be fanless then) or some movie hardware decoder on board. Currently most popular are NVIDIA ION based mini motherboard that can easily decode Full HD stream without CPU usage.
So what to choose?
On the beginning of this article my head was full of ideas for a media center to recommend. But after considering these 3 points I can recommend only one mini media center. In this place I really recommend a ZOTAC MAG! It is small and have very elegant look or can be mounted on back of your TV. It have fanless one core version. And it have ION chipset on board! Moreover it can be easily customized as it have no HDD nor RAM when you buy it. You may put as big disk and as much memory as you need. Have better recommendation..? Please share in the comments.
This post has been written by Chris Kreci, the author of Mini Motherboard blog that is writing daily about Mini-ITX and HTPC solutions.
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