I’ve been on the fence about building / buying a replacement for my Popcorn Hour media player. It now looks like even the low end new NetTop PCs with the ATOM+ION combination are "good enough".

I liked the price of the new Acer AspireRevo entry level hardware ($200) since it has the ION graphics which handles 1080p for my TV. However, I was concerned with the underpowered ATOM 230 (single core 1.6Ghz) CPU. I really like the idea of the big brother with the ATOM 330 (dual core 1.6Ghz) CPU but it has the pricier $330 wallet sapping.

Lifehack.com has a good walk through of setting up the Acer with XMBC and credits burgemaster with the details.