I tried OpenElec, Xbian and RaspMC and preferred OpenElec because it did gapless playback although I had to deliberately use an older version to do so, may revisit. Analog audio is poor (DAC resolution which is a hardware limitation and clicks/crackles) so I would only use HDMI. I also tried XBMC on an old Acer Aspire One (512MB, Atom, 8.9" 1024*600 screen) and it was much slicker on that than the Pi but I did not try video. Both were a reasonable method to get Airplay, my Sony Bluray does DLNA too but navigation is rather basic.

My present plan is to run a spare energy efficient, cheap, quiet, small form factor PC instead - whilst it has onboard graphics, the E8400 dual core at 3GHz flies compared to these toys, onboard audio sounds good analog or digital and it has displayport output so I can get a displayport to HDMI to the TV. I may as well dump my music on its hard drive but can also plug it into the network and it will double as an always on server.

I do not have the latest one (only the 256mb model B) but as that runs XBMC extremely well then the doubling of internal memory certainly isn't going to make it worse.

The only thing that I haven't been able to is implement any kind of 'simple' remote control. It is possible and there are several sites around to show how to do it, I just haven't had time to try any of them.

I found that xbmcRemote works well.

Thanks John. That I have done, I just don't like using my iPhone to control XBMC. I wanted a 'proper' remote.

There is something about the HDMI standard passing the signals to connected devices and you can use that, but I haven't looked into it properly.

All I've read in connection with that and the Pi is problems.

I've had my Pi since it came out. Played with it abit and not touched it since.

Problem i had is a lot of my videos are 1080p DTS files which the pi can't handle

OpenElec 3 is out, just tried it and it is more stable, worth a go.

Excellent. I'd see the RC's but didn't want to foul things up by running one so was waiting for the final release. Might try and pop it on the ATV1 (if it's still supported) and see how it goes.