... Whether you like it or not every dime you spend is politically significant, even when it is not politically motivated.
If you bought Nike's Shoes in the 90s you validated the idea that it is OK to make 8 years old boys from the phillipines work 14 hours a day for $1 to make shoes. Maybe you didn't care, maybe you didn't even know, maybe you thought it was a great idea or that it was the will of God or the free market, but in ANY case your money was given to Nike and to them (and to the rest of the market, and to the politician and the general public) it meant : FUCK YEAH keep doing it !
Now there are 2 simple ways to act after you realized this :
A] You can keep bitching about how you're not politically motivated (I mean WTF ? do you even know what it means ? politically motivated = motivated by the concern over the life of the community, that literally is what it means... How can you not give a fuck about the life of your community ? how can one be so brainwashed that he would think that to be concerned about others is bad ?)
Or B] you can deal with it and learn to be a grown man responsible for your actions.
And yes XBMC was ported to hte ATV2 I know, that's why it is exactly what I said on my previous post...

Did you read what I replied to that guy ?
I wouldn't buy an ATV2 for the exact same reason I wouldn't buy a roku, that validates the idea of Apple (and Roku) that it's better to sell a closed device.
Every single buck you spend is a vote, and the money you spend during the 4 years between each brief period of time during which you pretend to give a fuck about the world, and coincidentally choose a puppet to place in the white house, has much more influence of the world than the ballot you cast to choose the puppet.
But yes of course if I had to choose between 2 evils I'd definitely go for the ATV2+XBMC over the Roku + hypothetical XBMC maybe someday.

If you do believe in the R-Pi you also do not believe in Roku. I prefer to spend 2 hours tinkering with a device I own and master to get the same result as just buying a Roku, because this sends the right message to roku : F*** off I'm not giving $100 for something I can't modify.
You're not merely a consumer... Lol.

Another way of saying what you just said is :
"I find it pretty cool that some people bust their ass off to make such awesome open hardware and support open software (XBMC). So in that light I'm going to give all my money to their competitors who chose the closed model and lock the shit out of their product, and then I'll pray for someone to hack it, to put on it the very same software I would have used on the R-Pi, just because I'm an inconsistent asshole."
There translated that for you.

You are right it isn't about powerfull hardware. The part (hardware) that does the video decoding is a seperate deicated hardware chip. So your GTX 590 and your GT540 have the exact same video decoding capabilities, because they have the same Pure Video chip.

My laptop stutters with 1080p with a 2.2Ghz dual core P8600, yet it plays perfectly smooth on an atom 330+nVidia ION.
"Most modern" GPU have hardware decoders (nVidia calls it Purevideo, ATI Unified Video Decoder) and most ARM SoC have those too.
So to be even clearer there is a very small and efficient piece of dedicated silicon chip that can decode 1080p h.264, and that particular sub-device has proper support undeer XBMC right now => WIN !

You spent a few THOUSANDS on your TV ? clearly we don't have the same TV needs... oO
I spent $500 and I have a 46inches 1080p 120Hz screen... So that little $30 HTPC will do great, k thx bye.
BTW I didn't hear any of you outraged millionaires bitch about the Apple TV2 being ONLY $99, and that proper millionaire should spend $2000 on a HTPC with SLI 590 GTX.
I mean do you sell HTPCs for a living or do you just like to complain about how awesome things are ?
Jesus christ...

Yes the OpenGL perf won't be on par with a GTX 560 if that's where you are getting at, but then again I don't think someone building a HTPC for $30 will be bothered by the unibality tu use the most "flashy" XBMC skins.
As long as the UI is smooth with basic theme and 1080p playback is good I'm sold !

This isn't the framerate of the video playback. It's the framerate of the UI refreshing. it's perfectly "normal" considering the OpenGL performance of the GPU. And it's also very smooth for any navigation inside the UI. You don't need 30fps on UI.

It is hard to do any legal damage to a corporation when you have a class action, a rock solid case, good PR, public support AND great lawyers.
So now imagine you're alone, you have no PR, it's a case in a million so nobody cares, and you are facing an administration that enforces this law to do the exact opposite of what you're trying to accomplish.
You stand 0 chance of doing anything. And 0 * 1 million complaints = 0

The problem with you americans of this generation is you've been fed so much propaganda since you were born that you are incapable of facing criticism.
It is terribly shamefull and taboo to even acknoledge the smallest tiny imperfection in your system or way of life. You are just not wired to do so. You've never been told. The system has successfully programmed you without the possibility of critical thinking on your condition as a country : you're the greatest, full stop.
Well 2 things :
A] Even the greatest is not perfect, nobody is, and the US political system certainly isn't, no more than the average US citizen.
B] Being the greatest is NOT a gift from god, it takes a lot of work (which you haven't done in the last 40 or so years), and it requires that from time to time you take a critical look at yourself (maybe even hear a few criticism from outside the US huh ? you know that weird place where 95% of the world lives) and asses your actual "greatness".

Actually I'm not quite sure of the body count part.
The nazis did kill a lot of people, but almost half of them were Russian, and I'd say the responsability for their deaths have to be shared by Stalin sending them barefoot with one rifle for 2.
If you pile up pacific 1941-1945, liberation of Europe, corea, vietnam, Irak (1 & 2) afghanistan, Kosovo that's quite a few millions already, and I haven't mentionned the deaths in South american coups, military dictatures and revolutions for the last 50 years or so, which are mostly to be blamed on the CIA, hence the US.
So yeah... sorry about that, anyway I second your argument sir.

Yes the US isn't the worst on freedom of speech, fair enough they rank pretty well even. Want a medal ?
Meanwhile In the last 10-12 years US citizens have been manipulated in starting 2 wars, invading 2 countries, spending $5 trillions on military, emprisonning 800 people with no trial, 200 of whom are still in prison, most of whom are US citizen and 27 of whom are children.
Us citizens were also tricked into the Patrioct act, I mean come ON ! I'm really not anti-american, and in fact I really admire a lot of the principles on which the USA were created and what they've accomplished, but failling to see that you've been going downhill, bad time, on almost all the fronts and especially on the personnal freedom and citizen awereness, would require to be blind, deaf, and to have had both hands cut off (no braille for you bitch).
You would need to be really ignorant of your own history (which most americans are) not to see some parallels with the Mac Carty era, or the 1920's hunt for commies and anarchists. I mean last time you went apeshit this bad, in the late 50s, you ended up with 12 000 Nukes, a couple of innocent scientists dead and the mention of God added to your pledge of allegiance (seriously, probably the worst part seeing how scary your christian fundamentalists are now)
So in conclusion, AMERICA : FUCK YEAH ! But seriously you need to get a grip.

Don't take it the wrong way but you're patently inconsistent in your thoughts.
What I mean is the two problems are very much alike contrary to what you might think. You babble about how the US government is imprisonning its own citizens indefinitely without trial, or more precisely how a recent law gives it this power, because you're a man of principles. Indeed the (current) US government has pledged not to use such a power, so in fact there is no real problem, but it is in principle a very bad law.
The very same is true for PIPA/SOPA, if used decently it would only be an alienation of personnal freedom and a bad law that puts even more power in the hands of private corporations and even less in citizens' while crippling the internet businesses.
BUT the law is so loosely and badly written and inspired that it opens the door to other legal behaviours that would do much more, and have much more dire consequences.
So ultimately you oppose the first law for a very good reason (imo) and I really don't see how you could possibly consider the second one any less dangerous or detestable, it is a question of principles, that we do not accept to compromise our value of individual freedom and our right to a fair trial or the integrity of our judicial system. PIPA/SOPA or whatever, the problem isn't even in the consequences of the law itself, it's in the consequences of passing such laws on american politics.

I'm just very curious as to why he is doing this ? I mean what financial benefit does he get from this ?
Is he actually making money off the scam right now ?