http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/ Engadget Comments for OrigenAE cranks out sexy 1080p LCD-equipped HTPC chassis http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 20th 2007 2:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 5:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
That thing is clean. Me like.]]>Jan 19th 2007 6:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 6:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/sanyo-epson-announce-7-1-inch-1080p-lcd-by-far-the-worlds-smal/]]>Jan 19th 2007 6:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 6:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 7:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 7:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
that being said, the design on this puppy is great. Yes, the screen on the front is silly, but it sure does crank up the geek-cred.]]>Jan 19th 2007 7:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 10:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
What a waste.]]>Jan 19th 2007 7:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
It IS a touch screen. OrigenAE has been working on this for more than a year now.]]>Jan 19th 2007 7:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
Full ATX motherboard support is teh win, though]]>Jan 19th 2007 7:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 19th 2007 8:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Choice is good...no , Great ! I want.]]>Jan 19th 2007 9:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Choice is good...no , Great ! I want."

Yeah, as opposed to the added flexibility of being able to run those two OSes, PLUS OS X if you were to get a Mac and not a Windows PC. That's SO much less flexible.

If you are in the market for an HTPC, the best value at the moment is probably a Mac Mini.]]>Jan 19th 2007 11:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
HTPCs are a total KLUDGE. Useless. But hey, by all means: Go get yourself one today, and see whether it lives up to the promises. Seriously, I encourage you to get one now. Please, prove me wrong...

See if you'll still be using it 18 months from now, assuming you don't return it immediately in disgust. The only people that use HTPCs are dorks that actually think it's cool to build a home theatre around a computer. Useless.]]>Jan 19th 2007 10:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
as for OTA and cable card, support is comming, blame the industry not the htpc.

do I have an htpc? no, but close. I have a terrabyte server to store my timeshifted media (no, I don't torrent) and a LinkPlayer2 which I use to stream my content to the home theater via a customizable web interface. this way the HDD noise stays out of the living room but i still get all the other benifits of the htpc. ]]>Jan 20th 2007 10:38AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
1) No HDTV. OTA doesn't count. The vast majority of people get their HDTV via cable and satellite. Whar good is the main value of an HDTV - use as a PVR - when you can't watch or record HDTC?

2) There isn't a single TV tuner card that can compare with the image quality of your average cable box or TV tuner. The output looks like SD on a plasma: fuzzy, muddy, and wasked-out.

3) Gaming on an HTPC us useless. You constantly have to patch the games manually, and most games these days come with onerous copy protection that has been proven to screw-up your system.

4) I have yet to find a keyboard-mouse or other peripheral that is an acceptable replacement for the equivalent on the Desktop.

5) Because of # 4, using the Windows UI to navigate an HTPC is useless. So, you have to use the Media Centre interface, but then what's point of using a computer as a home theatre if you end-up using a dumbed-down interface.

6) Windows computers are rife with spyware and viruses.

7) Windows is a bloated kludge of an OS. How many lines of code comprise that OS compared to, say, OS X? I don't know the number off the top, but I'll bet it's at least 2-3 times as much.

8) With the emergence of DRM in Vista, the value of using a PC as a home theatre is lost, since you can only do with the content hat you're permitted to do. All that flexibility and power of the PC as an information processing device is useless.

There are A LOT of other reasons why HTPCs are useless, but those are the big ones that come to mind of the top of my head.]]>Jan 19th 2007 11:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Go talk to the MythTV guys about this. There are a great number of Myth boxes out there pulling HDTV over the federally mandated FireWire ports in their HD Cable Boxes.

"2) There isn't a single TV tuner card that can compare with the image quality of your average cable box or TV tuner. The output looks like SD on a plasma: fuzzy, muddy, and wasked-out."
Well, first, that's because you're using cheap, junky capture cards. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150, 250, 350, and 500 series cards produce excellent quality videos (and feature on-board MPEG-2 encoders too). However, you're right in that it is a little fuzzy, but that's because you're UPSCALING video from 525 scanlines to something higher (I'm guessing 1024x768). However, this isn't really that much worse, because your average SDTV produces same quality output, the difference is that the pixels are set for this lower resolution (less blur from scaling) and it's further away from your face than your monitor.

"3) Gaming on an HTPC us useless. You constantly have to patch the games manually, and most games these days come with onerous copy protection that has been proven to screw-up your system."
Who does serious gaming on their HTPC? And why would the system being an HTPC interfere? HTPCs run the same operating systems as a non-HTPCs. They use the same video cards. Plenty of Myth users run Linux games and emulators on their systems and enjoy it a lot.

"4) I have yet to find a keyboard-mouse or other peripheral that is an acceptable replacement for the equivalent on the Desktop."
MythTV users have found a great number, but most of the time they just use their TV-style remotes.

"5) Because of # 4, using the Windows UI to navigate an HTPC is useless. So, you have to use the Media Centre interface, but then what's point of using a computer as a home theatre if you end-up using a dumbed-down interface."
So don't use Windows. Myth users usually just configure their menus to have launchers for most everything they could want. Custom media players, scripts, and most everything they could want is available as a plug-in (NetFlix queue management, web browser, recipe management, emulators, non-recorded media playback, weather, etc.)


"7) Windows is a bloated kludge of an OS. How many lines of code comprise that OS compared to, say, OS X? I don't know the number off the top, but I'll bet it's at least 2-3 times as much."
Yeah, Windows is bloated. OS X has some bloat to it, but it's significantly less. So the solution: don't use Windows. I mentioned that above. Linux and OS X are perfectly viable solutions. HTPC software is available for OS X (Front Row, CenterStage, iTheater) and Linux (MythTV, FreeVo).

"8) With the emergence of DRM in Vista, the value of using a PC as a home theatre is lost, since you can only do with the content hat you're permitted to do. All that flexibility and power of the PC as an information processing device is useless."
Then don't use Vista. SageTV, a Windows app, produces DRM-less files last I checked. MythTV outputs in DRM-less MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and Nuppel video files that can be dragged-and-dropped on any other computer.

Please, go back and do more research. Don't think that because WinXP MCE is mentioned that it's the ONLY option. HTPC ≠ WinXP MCE. Technically speaking, my XBox functioned for quite a while as an HTPC, running XBMC and MythTV.]]>Jan 20th 2007 2:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/ USB adapter ($20, max if you purchase it, but you can build one easily), and about 10-15 minutes of effort can let you run XBox Media Center (XBMC) on your XBox. Significantly cheaper than a Mac Mini. True, it's not nearly as small, nor as multifaceted as a Mac Mini, but it's cheaper, and you get that wonderful satisfaction of making something do a task it was never intended to do, and YOU made it work (with the help of others...)]]>Jan 20th 2007 2:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
You mean that Mac mini that has no internal expandability, limited memory and a useless 2.5" internal hard drive? Just what I wanted to build an HTPC out of: a box that requires a couple more external boxes in order to function and HTPC software that is the least capable of all platforms. Get real.]]>Jan 20th 2007 12:42AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
HTPCs are still alive and well. There is no other way to cheaply store hundreds of movies. And these ripped dvds play back with very high quality with theatertek.

Windows is a good platform for htpcs. there is more software for it (much of it free) It also is the only OS that provides high quality dvd picture. Macs have dvd quality that some say a 30 dollar dvd player can best.]]>Jan 20th 2007 2:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 20th 2007 3:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/
the silent pc is very possible today. as an example, the noisiest thing in my Shuttle xPC is the fan on the GeForce card, and with a full size case it's not hard to make that silent either.]]>Jan 20th 2007 10:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 20th 2007 3:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Jan 20th 2007 4:15AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.origenae.com/en/htpc_s21t.htm]]>Jan 30th 2007 8:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/19/origenae-cranks-out-sexy-1080p-lcd-equipped-htpc-chassis/Apr 15th 2007 7:43PM