best cheap general emulation box for TV- wii or xBox?

[8bit]

I think the Ouya is worth considering for a small emulation box on the TV. Add a PS3 controller to it and you are golden. Check out http://dayoftheouya.com/a-list-of-all-known-emulators-for-ouya

Here is a list of the platforms the Ouya can emulate.

Nintendo (DS, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Gamecube, N64, NES, SNES)
SEGA (Mega Drive, Game Gear, Master System, Dreamcast, Saturn)
SNK (Neo Geo, Neo Geo Pocket)
SONY (PSX, PSP)
OTHER (Amiga 1200, Atari 2600, Atari ST, C64, Lua-3D, MAME, MSX, PC-Games streaming, RetroArch, Scumm, Turbografx-16, x86)

[fastbilly1]

Right now my sub $200 bet is on the HP Stream 200

Its $179 on Amazon and it is the same power as a Venue 8 pro or compute stick, just in a bigger form factor that can take up to 6 gigs of ram and a bigger M2 SSD. So you can emulate up to some Gamecube games on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lywbm_4YVEg

[noiseredux]

^or building off what Fast said, you can get a Dell Venue Pro 8 cheaper from a guy I know.

it's me.

[isiolia]

That HP seems like a good bet, and there's a pricier version that has more out of the box (except it uses a HDD instead of tiny SSD).

You can occasionally find the Lenovo Q190 for sub-$200 as well, which is an older device, but still solid for the purpose and has 4GB of RAM base. I gave one of those to one of my brothers with an SSD swapped into it. Very easy machine to work on.

[sharpfork]

I know that having to babysit xp or windows 7 is my problem. I don't like having to tweak a desktop os to run like a co sole or appliance. I've used Linux builds like open elec but those tended to drive the configuration burden to the emus and frontend.

I'm OP so I'll call out the word cheap in my title. The linked PCs are 10x (or so) of an original xbox, wii, or ras pi.

[Anapan]

In that case, I'd still choose an Xbox. I never spend more than $25 on one from pawn or thrift shops. That way if the dvd drive is shot I can still make a working unit with a good drive from Rich. Spend the extra money to peice together 2-4 Logitech cordless precision controllers on ebay. You do not need matching receivers and controllers as long as you have 1 of each it will work. They eat through batteries but they're the best you can get.
Find or aquire a 320 gig pata harddrive, follow the swap procedure, and use Xbox AID to get everything installed. Next join Emuxtras and swap out the emulators for those ones off their forums.

A Wii is pretty good, having 240P for emulators, but going with component and emulated scanlines on the xbox is still pretty decent...
Unless you really like the Wii's game lineup over the Xbox's incredible lineup the support for the other emulators is more refined imo.