neil9000

Nice. This is the nuc i got, i added a old 120GB drive i had laying around and 4GB of DDR3L ram to it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00I60Z8Q2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I did buy it september 2014, and i know the low cost nuc's are better these day's.

Yep i just put libreelec on it with the built in tv headend server, and that records over the air stuff for me, in HD on several channels. I have sky satellite all over the house but thats all encrypted and only records to its box. The over the air i can run through handbrake and add to my plex/kodi library's. So in the end the nuc wasn't a bad investment.

Yeah ok, i do remember reading somewhere that HTC are very good at officially providing the software to root, and therefore switch OS on there devices.

Yeah i bought a intel nuc before, thinking it was suitable for my needs, it wasnt. Its now just a PVR box that hooks into my KODI boxes.

Well you should be able to instal the bootloader if you root it? I was actually thinking windows 10 mobile. Probably to much hassle though to be honest.

Also are you just using Launchbox or hoping to use BigBox?

Well i have a windows tablet with a X5 Z8300 With only 2GB of ram and it will do most of what you want. However its only a 1200x800 resolution, but i assume you are going to want to run at 1080p? If so then you are probably going to need something stronger than that, also if you go with a mini pc like that you may be very limited on hard drive space, some just have a small amount of flash storage, some have a hdd. If you are going with one that has a hdd in it you may well be better building a small form factor pc yourself like a intel nuc. As @mothergoose729 said a rough budget would help us a lot when speccing a system.

Yeah when i upgraded from the M8 i just went with the HTC 10 as i think they are great hardware. Can you install retroarch on windows phone? I might see if i can root my M8 and put windows on it.

Yeah i have a HTC M8 sitting in a draw, which would be cool to turn into a handheld with that controller dock.

Yeah a 8inch tablet version could be cool.

I have never seen that before, but actually quite like the look of it.

you can use youtube download software to download trailers from youtube.

You could use this to update retroarch, it's what i use and works really well. It will update to stable or nightlies, your choice, it will also update cores if there is a newer version and there is also a option to just download the redist if you need that as well.

You want the big blue download button.

Click downloads then on the right themes. here. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/category/2-big-box-custom-themes/

There are several mame cores, you want the one just called "MAME" that's the current one. The choice of core will likely depend on your system. Some are designed to run on low powered systems but are far less accurate, others need a strong cpu but are very accurate emulators.

It depends on the specific shader some are quite heavy, but there are also some very lightweight ones as well. And when i say heavy MAME games themselves are not particularly heavy by themselves so it's not to bad. Also i am using that on a 60inch TV so the curvature and scanlines really pop at that size. I love the look personally.

Yep im a fan too, growing up in the 80's that's just how games from that era should look to me so i like to add it into my emulation.

I like scanlines personally, Here is how my mame looks in retroarch.

Yeah the save state stuff is handled by retroarch so it is the same across all systems, you can save by going into the ui, or you can set a hotkey combo and trigger it while in game.

1) That depends on the core that you are using generally speaking the 3D emulators can have there internal rendering increased, so N64 and Playstation can look a lot nicer than they should, but you need the relevant graphical power in your system. You can also add shaders to any core and there are 100's of different ones, some add scanlines some smooth out 2D graphics some add anti aliasing etc. This is the personal preference thing, only you can decide what looks good to you. 2) The main advantage with mame is you can upscale to 720p with that core, and like all the other ones you can add a shader of your choice to make it look better also. The MAME core in retroarch is also the 0.186 version so is just the same as you are currently using but with the upscale and shader benefits. Edit: Also with retroarch your controller will work with every system with very little if any setup, if it's a xbox 360 or equivalent pad it should just work out of the box for all systems.

That's true, now i think about it. Yeah didn't bother me much as i just went the bulk edit route. Newcomers adding mame for the first time and trying to use retroarch though could end up with a very messy platform if the import wizard just adds everything. They will have adult games for starters, which should probably be a action you have to turn on rather than just being imported as standard, which is what will happen if they import mame with retroarch.

Oh OK, i didn't see that though i also wasn't looking for it either, i was just waiting to get to the screen i assumed would show up at the end of the wizard. Though as i had already told launchbox that i was importing arcade (i just chose it from the dropdown) shouldn't it know it's arcade and give me that screen anyway?

OK, it's the first time i imported mame with retroarch so wasn't sure. Basically though if i hadn't of stopped it, it would of imported every single rom which in my case is a non-merged and full chd set, so would of been a total mess after import.