PCs & Mobiles Forum - RE: A continuation of my HTPC questions... can you check this please? - Page 6

had a nearly a week with this now, & thought it might be worth sharing my views on it's overall strengths & weaknesses.



Firstly,  the look & size of it, it's a bit smaller than the old style mac mini, & about the same size as the new mini, it's almost silent, & tbh i can't hear it at all unless i put my ear near it, & although it gets slightly warm to the touch, it never get's anything close to "hot"

i have it connected via the dvi (not tried the HDMI yet) & have to use the 3.5mm headphone jack for sound, which is annoyingly located at the front of the box   i'm running it 24/7 & at a res of 1920x1200, & it's as smooth as a peach on 99% of things, 1080p .MKV's are no problem for it at all,  the only sticky point is youtube,  some 1080p vids play fine, but some are jerky, everything else upto 720p plays fine (fully buffered before starting play, so not a connection issue)  not sure if this is a driver issue, that may be fixed in the future, not a huge issue for me as i don't normaly use the HD setting on youtube, but i remembered somebody saying they had an issue so thought i'd test it on mine...  otherwise, it's flawless on the video decoding side of it

on day to day "desktop" use, i'd say it's perfectly adequate,  not as fast as my previous monster pc's, but it boots very quickly & operates fine (opening new windows etc) But, just like my old netbook (1st gen atom cpu) it starts to slow down if you try & do multiple things at once, although, as i type this i'm also playing a 6gig 720p video in a re-sized window, & there is no noticable slowdown at all.  But,  on stuff that doesn't use the GFX hardware as extra grunt, things slow down as they are relying purely on the reletively puny CPU (1.6ghz dual core atom) for instance, my gaming pc's could create a 5 hour m4b audiobook file from multiple smaller mp3 files in around 5 minutes, the same thing on the ion setup takes around 40 mins, & apreciably longer if i'm using the system while it's running.  However, video recoding is very fast in comparison, as the software i was using utilised the ion gfx cores as well as the cpu's.

this replaced my "main" pc, & has also taken over all the downloading & streaming from my gaming rig, & on that side of it, it's just as good as anything i've used, streaming hi def content over it's ethernet connection without any issue, & for a fraction of the power compared against the previous pc (since i run it 24/7, this was one of the main reasons for getting it)  iirc from the bumf, the Z-Box takes around 20w at idle, & around 27w while playing 1080p video,  so around a quarter of the power used on on old style 100w light bulb....  which just boggles my mind lol... & bearing in mind my gaming rig wouldn't even start up with a psu under 550watt's,  & in fact crashed under heavy load (ie, playing ut3) & i had to buy a 650watt psu because of that

i think the ion box's are all on a pretty level playing field, so the above should stand for the majority of them, & there are much more flexible options if you're looking for something a bit more multipurpose, for instance, the gigabyte ion box (as seen in this thread) has a more costomise friendly case, & can take a dvd/blu-ray drive internaly,  & iirc has 2 memory slots, against the zotacs single slot (max 2 gig capacity)  tbh,  the reasoning behind the Z-Box for me was that if it worked out, i was gonna save for another one, & use it to replace my mac mini, & happily enough, it met all my expectations, & is quiet enough to run 24/7 in the bedroom, like my mini has done for about the last 4 years....

top & bottom of it....  if i had money to burn,  i'd still buy the new version of the mac mini,  but i don't,  & happily enough, the ion box's seem to be very good all round players,  & cost around a third of the price of a ne mac mini... (mini starts from £650,  Z-box's start from around £170 ex storage & os)

EDIT= re= COD MW1..  just tried installing it, put the current patch on ect, but it's jerky & unplayable

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forever
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This item was edited on Sunday, 24th October 2010, 22:18

wierdly enough it plays the new Medal of Honour pretty well


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forever
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ars HTPC Guide: December 2010
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/12/htpc-guide-1.ars

Might be useful/interesting to those who have dabbled in HTPC or are thinking about it, as it briefly mentions some of the units mentioned in this thread, but seems aimed at "build your own" geekery rather than "off the shelf" but then from that site that's probably to be expected.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 8th December 2010, 08:42

Reg Hardware review of hadrware Boxxee

D-Link Boxee Box DSM-380 media streamer
Seem to have a few issues with the software, £200 price tag seems biggest issue to me, as they say:

Quote:
As a player for local media, Boxee excels – but so it should, for £200, when there are products that can do as well for half the price. For UK users, the IP TV functionality really isn’t good or broad enough to justify the extra price. ®
I've been playing with streaming content to my tv using dnla, since I rejiggled my routers etc. I tried mediatomb which wasn't bad to stream files fromt he upstairs pc to the tv downstairs. Unfortunately, that method only seems to let me play files, that I could copy to a usb stick and plug in my tv, which means no MKVs

However in Win 7 on laptop I used windows  media player, which will stream mkv files to the tv. Unfortunately I foudn that a 350mb divx file streams fine, a 1.7gb mkv was too juddery

All this was done using wired network. Not sure if it's because one of the PCs on the network was on the internet dling things, or I need to upgrade routers, or Win 7 laptop, not powerful enough for job? The movie was watchable on the laptop.

In the meantime it seems easiest to just convert an mkv to avchd disc and play on the blu ray player, but I would like to get streaming to work properly, but it looks like it's probably easiest to buy something like a Sumvision Cyclone Micro 2 for £30 quid.

Wireless Graphics card - KFA2 GTX 460 WDHI review



Quote:
the KFA2/Galaxy GeForce GTX 460 WHDI with the card transmitting a wireless signal to your HDTV. An idea that originates from Intel actually, as they also have WHDI solutions these days.

But think about it ... a graphics card with no monitor connectors attached to it, yet when you look at the HDTV you see your desktop in 1920x1080P perfectly clear and fine, all transmitted through the air.

This looks like one of those upgrade people will get away with, on the promise of removing some of those unsightly wires

I didn't see price mentioned, I saw a wireless HDMI sender somewhere else, and it was reviewed as being good, but v expensive, I guess this graphics card will be.

Snaps' PC thread got slightly hijacked by Mac Mini mention, so I thought I'd ressurect this thread for this article

Ars reviews the 2011 Mac mini as an HTPC
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/08/ars-reviews-the-2011-mac-mini.ars

no cd/dvd/blu ray drive is their big negative about it. I suppose omission of one almost makes sense from a desktop point of view (although I wouldn't want a machine without one), and it's not designed as an htpc as such.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 10th August 2011, 07:29

I'm still well happy with my Revo running XBMC.

Never got the remote working, but just use the wireless mouse. 

It's played any MKV's I've played, but in fairness I generally only get the 2.5gb ones at highest.  I rarely watch films anymore, it's all US tv series.  Mines wired to the Nas box which has all my media on it.

www.last.fm/user/1mills