Originally Posted By: drakino
Originally Posted By: RobotCaleb
I run XBMC on an ASRock ION 330 which is hardly a power-hungry beast and is far from large. I doubt it's completely silent as it does have a fan inside, but I've never heard it. If you want, I can plug my Kill-a-Watt in and tell you exactly how much power it uses while decoding a 20+ GiB 1080p video.

31W at idle? Thats more then three times the most recent Mac Mini idle consumption. What are these companies doing to turn a supposedly power efficient and friendly CPU/chipset/GPU into a design that idles worse then a system much more powerful?

This is another reason to go with a purpose-built device. From what I'm finding on the web, the Apple TV draws about 1.7 to 2 watts. That's 2W while running Youtube or Netflix. I'm finding reviews that can't get the Roku above 7W.

I can't find stats for the Boxee Box, but I'd be surprised if it were more than a Mac Mini.

At the moment, the Roku looks really attractive, but it has nearly zero local media playback capabilities... ugh...
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Matt