Acer rolls out the Aspire X1200 home theater-friendly mini PC for $450

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.

[Frun @ Jul 8th 2008 11:53AM]

Is that a modem I see?

[jason @ Jul 8th 2008 11:55AM]

dial up goes well when you are watching movies.

[Jonathan Keim @ Jul 8th 2008 12:04PM]

Your avatar goes well with the comment

[Curtis Joslin @ Jul 8th 2008 12:07PM]

Doom!

anyways.. throw a blue ray player in it and i will sell my ps3

[Matt Keller @ Jul 8th 2008 12:11PM]

And I will buy it. $300. For a 60 GB model. $200 for a 20 GB model.

[JerryA @ Jul 8th 2008 12:59PM]

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.

[nd @ Jul 8th 2008 2:29PM]

Screw that- not only does it have a modem, but this "HTPC" has no tuner card! What the heck??

[Gustavo @ Jul 8th 2008 11:57AM]

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

[Chris Anderson @ Jul 8th 2008 3:32PM]

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...

[Gustavo @ Jul 8th 2008 11:58AM]

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

[OneLove @ Jul 8th 2008 12:00PM]

are you a robot? are you a robot?

[tom @ Jul 8th 2008 12:10PM]

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

[roach @ Jul 8th 2008 12:30PM]

@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.

[hal9000 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:37PM]

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

[Justin @ Jul 8th 2008 11:58AM]

I think it needs more USB ports...like 10 or 12....maybe even 100

[Alex Terry @ Jul 8th 2008 12:01PM]

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!

[woyna @ Jul 8th 2008 12:26PM]

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.

[mcdizzle895 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:49PM]

Dude! No way!

[Lukenlogs @ Jul 8th 2008 3:56PM]

and an infrared port on the front or bluetooth so one could use a remote... ?

[OneLove @ Jul 8th 2008 12:05PM]

The modem looks removable, so dual divco fusionHDTV7's baby!

[216 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:18PM]

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

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Jul 8th 2008 12:21PM]

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.

[Craig @ Jul 8th 2008 2:52PM]

+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.

[Eddy Alvarez @ Jul 8th 2008 12:27PM]

booo. worthless without cable card sluts (slots)

[mcdizzle895 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:49PM]

Totally dude.

[Ian @ Jul 8th 2008 1:13PM]

Agreed.

[kevin @ Jul 8th 2008 5:56PM]

Agreed, I hate cable labs, or whoever the company is that is just killing the cable card concept.

[Eddy Alvarez @ Jul 8th 2008 12:28PM]

boo, worthless w/o cable card sluts (slots)

[Samo @ Jul 8th 2008 12:28PM]

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.

[d00b @ Jul 8th 2008 12:30PM]

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.

[mcdizzle895 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:47PM]

Why is the Acer logo crooked? Nice touch.

[OddManOut @ Jul 8th 2008 12:58PM]

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...

[mcdizzle895 @ Jul 8th 2008 12:50PM]

Dude! No way!

[Wonderkid @ Jul 8th 2008 1:04PM]

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.

[PeterF @ Jul 8th 2008 1:37PM]

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.

[James @ Jul 8th 2008 3:17PM]

To be honest you can't exactly call the PC Wolrd selection comprehensive and breathtaking anyway so that's pretty much irrelevant.

[thedesolate1 @ Jul 8th 2008 1:08PM]

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.

[Mike @ Jul 8th 2008 1:20PM]

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

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 1:21PM]

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

[phanbouy @ Jul 8th 2008 1:33PM]

what bitrates were your h264 files?

i'm finding my core duo 1.83GHz unable to handle most 1080p content

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 1:49PM]

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

[jayzee77 @ Jul 8th 2008 2:41PM]

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

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 2:11PM]

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

[Gfxlonghorn @ Jul 8th 2008 6:00PM]

Are you serious dude?.. If you want all that, buy a PS3 and just swap out the hard drive and put XP on it.

[d00b @ Jul 8th 2008 2:18PM]

@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

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 2:29PM]

. 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

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 2:31PM]

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

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 2:41PM]

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

[korelem @ Jul 8th 2008 4:38PM]

Can you look in the manual or on the X1200 itself, if it has SPDIF optical out, I really need to know this? Thanks

[jboschetto @ Jul 8th 2008 5:11PM]

it does NOT have an optical output.....it does the 5.1 audio through the HDMI