popcorn hour
i love xbmc, i can tolerate the xbox fan noise and the loud hard drive i put in it. however, it’s too slow for any high-res content or any content encoded with newer cpu-hungry codecs like h264.
i poked around and found the pocorn hour. runs a little sigma chip which can decode h264, various other codecs, output 1080p, smb/nfs client/server, hdmi, component, spdif, svideo, composite, ata100 jack, 2 usb ports, remote control, runs embedded linux. etc.  you can read more about it on their site.
i read some reviews, compatability with some televisions is a bit odd, but so is anything. interface isn’t nearly as mature as xbmc. samba server/client can be a bit odd. it plays just about anything. some scene-released content isn’t compatible. doesn’t downsample/handle DTS, just passes it on through to the tv/receiver (licensing issue.)
i pre-ordered an a-100. it arrived about three weeks later, i hooked it up, set a static address, downloaded new updates through its interface, and pushed some stuff to the 40gb hdd i put in it. 802.11g w/ 30% signal strenth through linksys jobbies isn’t fast enough to watch any 720p content. it does work. first h264 720p movie i watched had DTS audio. my receiver doesn’t have anything more than analog inputs, so i had no sound.. the popcorn hour community wrote an app which converts the DTS audio to AC3 and adds the AC3 channel to the original file. All automatic-like. nice. while that encoded, i watched some ‘planet earth’ stuff i had laying around. besides some UI issues, some .mkv files won’t let you seek. i don’t claim to know the circumstances, that’s what the forums are for.
with an older 7200rpm hdd in it, it’s kinda vibratey. i put some clear rubber protective pads on the hdd mount, in the corners of the lid, and the corners of the base. this helped considerably. i also had some 1/4″ rubber grommits laying around, i put them under the corners to isolate it from the table.. this helped some more. i suppose a 2.5″ 5400rpm drive would be better.
so far, it’s nice. it’s locked up a few times but they release updates regularly. if i don’t like it, i can unload it on ebay for more than i paid for it. 🙂