Always wanted to install a little computer into your home theater but none of the
available options are cutting it, what with all the giant media files and HD displays you're rolling? Enter Acer's Aspire X1200, which for $450 includes on-board NVIDIA GeForce 8200 graphics, an
AMD Athlon X2 2850e processor, and HDMI port. Acer promises full 7.1-channel audio support as well as the guts to work with H.264, VC1, and MPEG2 and the spunk to output 1080P. The whole shebang comes in a rack-friendly 10.6 x 4.0 x 14.4-inch enclosure. Of course, prices scale up to $699 based on your needs -- the latter coming with a 22-inch display -- but the base price will get you a 320GB SATA II drive and the start of what could be a sweet little home theater PC.
posted Jul 8th 2008 11:49AM
Is that a modem I see?
dial up goes well when you are watching movies.
Your avatar goes well with the comment
Doom!
anyways.. throw a blue ray player in it and i will sell my ps3
And I will buy it. $300. For a 60 GB model. $200 for a 20 GB model.
Yeah, I know many people are switching to cell only but if you have a landline, you can run it into your HTPC so that incoming caller ID shows up on the screen while you are watching it.
Screw that- not only does it have a modem, but this "HTPC" has no tuner card! What the heck??
i have to say thats is a good price for the specs specially how it runs windows vista x64 witch it lets you use all 4GB of standard memory
No, actually that's a pretty BAD price, for what you're getting. I just built a HTPC for a customer of mine, it was $520 shipped -
Athlon X2 5200+
ASUS M2A-VM mobo
Win XP MCE
2 gb DDR2-800 (Crucial Ballistix Tracer)
500gb Seagate 7200.11
Athenatech HTPC case w/PSU
MSI Radeon HD3650 gpu w/ HDMI
Turtle Beach Montego sound card (optical in/out)
Samsung DVD burner (sata)
all he needs now is a TV tuner and BluRay burner...
i have to say thats is a good price for the specs specially how it runs windows vista x64 witch it lets you use all 4GB of standard memory
are you a robot? are you a robot?
Gustavo +1, vista 64 is such a memory/resource hog. 4GB will eventually be eaten up by OS.
Plus, all the DRM restriction with vista, so long home theater
@Tom
No Tom. My tablet PC with 1.1 ghz and 1.5 GB runs awesome with Vista using Photoshop. I was going to upgrade to 2 GB, but I haven't had the need.
People keep mentioning DRM, but I still haven't experienced it with Vista. The only DRM I experience is when I bought a iTouch which forced me to install iTunes...iTunes decided anything it handles can only have one copy...I got rid of both of them.
tom what are you on about - have you never heard of VideoReDo
if you are on about dvr-ms there is no DRM there at all - i have been using MCE since it's early 2005 days and now with Vista 64 and DRM is NO issue
I think it needs more USB ports...like 10 or 12....maybe even 100
I'm liking the case. Seeing as I have a full desktop siting in my front room at the moment anything would be more discrete!
Why is the 'Acer' logo vertical if the case is designed to go in a rack? With the case on its side, the logo is also on its side. Lame.
Dude! No way!
and an infrared port on the front or bluetooth so one could use a remote... ?
The modem looks removable, so dual divco fusionHDTV7's baby!
I've seen this in person, its very ugly. Not as Ugly as the new large Acer PCs tho. But the first thing that comes to mind when you see this in person is NES (8-Bit) lol. I'm waiting for an NES mod on this thing
It would be nice to hear something about fans on the system. Few similar systems I have seen before following couple of hours of functioning were becoming quite loud. Due to internal temperature slowly rising and hitting particular limit fans were starting work faster producing more noise.
Also my friend went over sizable number of cheap upscaling DVD players before finding one which had quiet DVD drive.
+1
Noisy fans are teh suck when it comes to PCs in the TV room, and AMD procs aren't really known for their ability to stay cool under load.
booo. worthless without cable card sluts (slots)
Totally dude.
Agreed.
Agreed, I hate cable labs, or whoever the company is that is just killing the cable card concept.
boo, worthless w/o cable card sluts (slots)
Nice aesthetics, tidy spec.....
...Shame it's an Acer; had so much trouble with them so far I think I'll never use them again.
Available at Bestbuy.com for $459 (for the Athlon 5000 SKU). The 4850e is actually better for its lower TDP (45W vs 65W), although I'd prefer an even lower power CPU, since the 8200 can handle HD decode.
The main concern with this unit as a HTPC will be noise level. The compact case means low-profile HS solution, and the unit's low cost means that the HS needs to be cheap. Add the two and you have cheap noisy fans. Some aftermarket retrofit will probably be needed.
Why is the Acer logo crooked? Nice touch.
I like! 80's design flair and all.
Contrast this with the Asus Eee Box. Of course, they're not direct equivalents, but you get a lot more power for only about $50 more. Overall a better value I'd say.
And don't get your panties in a knot...I'm not trying to rehash ye olde' 'You can get a full size laptop for less than an EEE PC, so why would you ever buy one ?!?!?!?!' rant. I'm not. But $450 is a pretty good price for such a small PC. And it's a pretty well spec'd system for being so small.
The previous poster makes a good point though, if you're going to use this for HT, noise specs are important...some of these small systems are surprisingly loud, as they heat up quickly, and thus their proportionally tiny fans have to spin extra fast...
Dude! No way!
Acer just cannot do industrial design. Please compare to ASUS, whose EEE PC and desktop machines are not only slylish, but built like tanks. (My EEE PC is better made than my ex MacBook that cost £1000 more.) With regards to this Acer machine, here are some flaws in the design (where do we start?) a) USB ports located in random positions. b) No straight lines, the front panel lines are angled all wrong. c) Fan grill looks pants. d) Logo is wonky (probably glued on, oh dear!) e) PS/2 ports on the back? They went out in the 1990s! f) General complete lack of imagination and originality. Compare to the new ASUS desktop or certain device due out in July 11th. Having seen various Acer PCs in our local PC World, I would never touch them and hope they get their QA and design sorted because competition from them will keep the price of ASUS, Sony and Apple desktop machines competitive.
who cares what it looks like in the back? This is designed to go on the rack by the TV, meaning you will only ever see the back when setting it up.
To be honest you can't exactly call the PC Wolrd selection comprehensive and breathtaking anyway so that's pretty much irrelevant.
Your gonna need a lot more than 320 GB... with HD prices the way they are I am sure they could of squeezed in a bigger drive for the price.
They got the price wrong. It should $449, not $499.
Still a damn good deal, though, for a machine with 4 Gs memory and capable of video editing/playback at 1080p.
Now if I just could install XP on it instead of Vista, we'd really be talking!
Mike
I picked one of these up last week from Circuit City!! I got it for $449...I absolutely love it...It is the best HTPC for the price, hands down.....hopefully this will answer som of your questions..
-Fan: extremely quiet...can not hear it at all and still is inaudible when spinning up
-HDMI: it does 1080P AND it does audio (5.1)
-ESATA: yes it has one in the back (and no i doubt you can squeeze a bunch more drives inside but i havent cracked it open yet)
-HD Videos: it has played all of the 1080P mkvs and HDwmvs that i have thrown at it so far without studdering (with the exeception of one time but i was overtasking the system on purpose)
-Optical Drive: i am planning on throwing a Blu-ray drive in there (im pretty sure the graphics card will handle it because it played the M2TS files i ripped)
Overall: Id give this and A+ for the price...a couple extra features like bluetooth and Blu-ray would have been cool but are both a quick fix after a visit to newegg....the system is incredibly quiet and quick....Best bang for the buck HTPC for sure
what bitrates were your h264 files?
i'm finding my core duo 1.83GHz unable to handle most 1080p content
I had mkv's with bitrates of about 10,000kbps and they played without skipping....i havent had any problems with any of my files....if any files fail to play ill be sure to tell ya
jboschetto,
I have a few questions for you since you already own one. Have you tried using a wireless keyboard yet? How is that since it doesn't have bluetooth? Also, nowhere did I find the total specs on this. I assume it has built in wi-fi. Is that correct?
thanks
this circuitcity link may help with some specs of the one i have:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Acer-AX1200-U1520A-Desktop-PC-AX1200U1520A/sem/rpsm/oid/214483/catOid/-12962/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do
it does NOT have built in wireless...i have it hooked up through its Gigabit network card to my router directly....but you can easily throw a wireless card in there.....
I DO have a wireless keyboard and mouse...it uses bluetooth, which is NOT built-in, so i just plugged the bluetooth dongle in that came with my keyboard into one of the 9 usb slots....the keyboard works fine at 20 feet away...its a logitech MX5000 keyboard mouse combo
if you have any more questions feel free askin
Are you serious dude?.. If you want all that, buy a PS3 and just swap out the hard drive and put XP on it.
@jboschetto,
. Does it have drivers for XP?
. What is the power rating for the power supply?
. Is the DVD drive full height or low-profile?
. Does it have space & connectors for a 2nd internal hard drive?
TIA
. Does it have drivers for XP?
Not sure....its running Vista 64 bit ...if you tell me where to look ill find out
. What is the power rating for the power supply?
. Is the DVD drive full height or low-profile?
dvd drive is full height, which makes it easy to throw in a cheap blu-ray drive...newegg has em for $120
. Does it have space & connectors for a 2nd internal hard drive?
i havent opened up the box yet to check that, so as not to void the warranty... I DOES have a ESATA on the outside so you can always go that route
oh yea the power supply....oops...ill have to crack it open to check that out too.....ill have time a little later too check those things out for you guys
ONE more thing to answer phanbouy@'s question
-i just tried a 30mbps m2ts blu-ray video sample (Jumper)....it played in PowerDVD without any lag or skips.....the sample was only 300megabytes large but it should be able to handle the whole file
....what does this mean...well hopefully it means that you can pop a blu-ray player in this baby and enjoy some 1080P without issues or needed upgrades
Can you look in the manual or on the X1200 itself, if it has SPDIF optical out, I really need to know this? Thanks
it does NOT have an optical output.....it does the 5.1 audio through the HDMI
Thanks for the answer... To bad it doesnt have SPDIF out, well the DIY HTPC will have to do, it wont be so small & stylish (using the THERMALTAKE DH101 VF7000BNS casing, ITS HUGE), but it will be made with love :) LOL
have you gotten around to putting in a blu-ray drive yet? i'm am still on the fence about buying one of these guys because im not quite sure that it can handle blu-ray playback smoothly
I plan on doing the same (Blu Ray) install soon. Have you found any that you like?
Thanks - Chris
This actually looks pretty good. Minimalistic design, good specs, well-priced. Looks like Acer is finally gettings its act straight.
What is the db spec for noise?
It's a nice HTPC as long as it's quiet.
if you are on about dvr-ms there is no DRM there at all - i have been using MCE since it's early 2005 days and now with Vista 64 and DRM is NO issue
Thats not what Microsoft says..
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0080/t.14189.html
For this to be a true HTPC I think it needs a TV Tuner card in it, and with only 1/2 height PCI express slots you might have to go with an external adapter for it. Would have been awesome if they included a tuner in it.
It lacks SPDIF connection.
well it has HDMI, which will output digital sound, so unless your audio receiver doesn't do HDMI, you shouldn't need SPDIF
I think one of those headphone jacks can be used for SPDIF with a mini-to-rca jack. Usually the orange colored one.
missing BluRay and an HDTV tuner...
I think they need to price it a little lower than that, if they want to compete with the subsidized prices of the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Where is the input for the dual TV tuner?
With a machine like I think it should be a DVR by second nature.
Can someone confirm if it has SPDIF optical out (regular or thru mini-to-rca jack, doesnt matter)? I am currently building a HTPC, but if it turns out that this little bugger has SPDIF, I am deffinitly buying him =)
Does it have VIVO via the hdmi port?
FYI:
System has 2 on-board SATA connectors, 1 for the DVD and 1 for the hard drive.
Power supply is 220 Watts
It will support the Hauppauge Win-TV HVR-1250 card
"Acer rolls out the Aspire X1200 home theater-friendly mini PC for $499"
Fix the headline; there are no models priced at $499. Only $4-4-9, $4-5-9 and $6-9-9.
This actually looks pretty good for the price. It'd even make a good compact desktop, in addition to a HTPC. Take out the useless 56K modem (to reduce power consumption), slap in a low-profile, dedicated PCI-E 2.0 gfx card and it's even better.
The version of this computer sold at Best Buy has an extremely loud fan and after about two days on the shelf collected a solid amount of dust on the exterior case ventilation (the side blowing heat off the processor). The specs are okay, but the first three displays put up had dead motherboards, cpus, or output video. 4th time's a charm.
@jboschetto & Anon: Thanks for the follow-up info.
@Balls: The hardware may decode VC1/H.264, but MCE won't handle "unauthorized" container formats like MKVs or even IFO/VOB. Considering how long it took MS to license DivX, I wouldn't hold my breath.
@Alastar: Thanks for the hands-on report. I think I'll wait on a lower power solution for HTPC use, something like the EEEBox but w/ G45 chipset to handle HD decode, or perhaps a Puma/780G solution.
No optical out?
And worst of all, no Blu-ray/HD-DVD/DVD burner? Come on don't make me laugh.
For $160 more, you can pop in an LG Blu-ray/HD-DVD/DVD+R DL drive to make it a way better machine.
Acer clearly needs to put future machines in the hands of beta testers to make sure they dont' leave anything out.
I picked one of these up last night. The system seems pretty quiet.
Curiously the back panel has a label for SPDIF and an indent in the case but it is filled in with plastic. So it looks like they dropped it.
The speaker config shows, curiously, two outputs over HDMI, analog, and also shows what should be a coaxial SPDIF. So, as I theorized earlier, we should be able to get coax SPDIF out of one of the mini jacks. I am planning to go 6-channel analog, but I will try the SPDIF route to see if it works for those here who are interested.
My plan is to throw a BD-ROM/HD-DVD drive in this thing (already on the way from NewEgg). The Cyberlink Blu-Ray advisor gave me a grey on the nVidia 8200, but nVidia claims the 8200 will do Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.
The toughest video I have is the Top Gear Polar Special 1080 H.264, and VLC is having problems with it (it isn't CPU bound, however, probably the video card/drivers). I played some 1080 MPEGs fine.
Have you installed a blu-ray drive yet and tried video playback? im very anxious to buy one of these systems and try it out, but i'd like to confirm that its capable of smooth blu-ray video playback before buying.
Acer broke the HDMI audio with a BIOS update. I believe systems are now shipped this new BIOS, thus no functioning HDMI audio out of the box. Acer support is unaware of this problem and thus there is no fix, nor any sign that this issue has been elevated to engineering. If you're thinking about using this as a Home Theater PC (HTPC), you'll need more than an HDMI cable.
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic109876.html
Easy for you all to bash a PC that you don't own. Well, I do own one. For the price, it has turned out to be one fine HTPC. Add a Blue-Ray drive and a tuner card, and this thing's bee's knees!
Check out what I just got!!!
Acer Restore CD for XP and VISTA
http://img407.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skmbtc35108103112200xy5.jpg
email me if you like for a copy
Trinchitella AT aol dot com
It's a really bad deal because if anything goes wrong they don't have customer service - the bring bad customer support to a new art form. You will have a $300 paper weight.