Kinetic HD:Hub HTPC gets hip with Core i7, square with HD DVD
By Darren Murph 
posted Mar 15th 2009 12:09AM
posted Mar 15th 2009 12:09AM
[Thanks, Anonymous]
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hey! I have that same case
Me too, but in silver. Kinda makes me wonder what the big deal is when you could build it yourself.
what's that case called? pretty sweet!
who makes that case?
is that an Antec?
http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=NzE4
Ditto on the silver version. It's an awesome case!
I too.
core i7 in an htpc is like heating your living room by burning money.
I know, it's pretty smart, right?
You've got to ask yourself, is the Dollar worth more than firewood?
I suppose you are right. There is no point in putting a core i7 in something that could easily use an atom processor or p4.
You need better than an Atom to play Bluray smoothly. A fast P4, maybe. A Slow C2D is fine. A Ci7 is definitely overkill.
Futureproofing? Maybe this thing can handle 1600p on all four monitors...?
If it's not adding a lot to the price including the functionality in the drive, what's so comical about it? Some people invested a decent chunk of money in HD DVDs from the outset before finally finding that blu ray would win.
I had few enough (I was buying both formats) that I was able to rip the ones I bought into a format I can still use, but for those who bought more than several that's a serious inconvenience, not to mention not easy for less techy people to do.
If including this functionality meant the size of the drive was increased substantially or there was an unnecessary bit of kit marring the design, or they included a drive that ONLY included HD DVD I would wholeheartedly agree with you.
Otherwise it was a bit off.
Sorry. Done with needless rant. I just found it odd that you thought this was so preposterous as if there was no one who ever purchased more than 1 HD DVD and still had them.
Cheers,
holto
Indeed, Kinetic is probably using the LG GGC-H20L BD-ROM/HD-DVD. It's only $140 retail, making it a pretty inexpensive BD drive so the HD-DVD support is just a nice perk on the side.
Yeah it felt a little like they were looking for a reason to make fun of it, because the fact that the drive ALSO does BluRay was almost relegated to the fine print.
I have to go even further, and wonder what the ratio of HD-DVD to Blu-ray sales is right now. HD-DVD was ahead up to the point of its official demise, but after that, prices have plummeted. I've bought more HD-DVDs since Toshiba dropped the format, than I did before. When you can get them for $5 each on Amazon, and seeing how slowly Blu-ray is moving along, I really have to wonder what the sales comparisons look like right now. The industry will never release those numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to find HD-DVD still keeping up with Blu-ray in total number of disc sales.
sure, they can use our American processors and software but they can't sell us their finished product??? why don't they just skip our superior processors/software and put some of their crap open source euro tech in it since they're too good to sell us their product!
Someone sounds jealous... consider all of the products manufactured in China which are not sold in China. At least you can build the same system or better yourself. Or you could keep crying about it...
Wah wah wah. Your 'great american software', like vista? I'll stick with my crap open source thanks. When you stop being ignorant/xenophobic maybe you should try it, it's good for you ;).
Intel has 15 global manufacturing plants, employing people from all walks of life.
http://www.intel.com/technology/manufacturing/index.htm
Most of the desktop CPUs people have have churnin in desktop rig would have be fabricated in china(able to meet volume vs cost)
The much lauded Core2duo was designed by a team in Haifa Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_2
''Our American Processors'' is a pretty uninformed and narrow minded statement.
Well it really wouldn't be that hard to just make it. Also, who says they're not selling them here? They probably won't, but that was just conjecture by the original poster, Mr. Murph. Sure, they probably won't sell them here, but why do they have to again? They're buying processors from Intel (an American company) and software from Microsoft and feeding money into our economy. Is that a bad thing? So if you go by the reasoning that we shouldn't export anything that can't be used back here in the states, then our economy would never have gotten started and we'd be making fires with the natives here.
@ matt, my american Vista is running great and I love it. Windows 7 will be even better. Maybe your prejudiced comments are just as bad as his nationalism.
If a dual format player (Just a player with HDMI) were to come out for under $250 I would be interested. Toss in Divx and Dual Layer DVD playback and I would jump at it if it was under $300.
I have 5 HD-DVD's that were free with my laptop from last year. (I got the disks days after Toshiba announced that it was giving up on HD-DVD.
So I have 5 movies I can only watch on my laptop.
Another reason why I want a dual format player... I have seen HD-DVD movies at the thrift store. A dual format player would be a great for these leftover movies floating about out there.
the way of the future for people that live in the past (laptops are where tv is)
I see that there is no future for proper grammar either.
Give me a completely silent laptop and I'll believe you, my HTPC has a passively cooled Pentium DC & Nvidia 7600.
Laptops (yes even Apple laptops) make quite a racket when the fans spin up playing HD video.
Right, because when I want to watch TV on a large screen, there's nothing I enjoy more than taking five minutes to dick around with hooking a laptop up to my TV, as opposed to just pressing a button on the front of my HTPC.
You = wrong.
this product very cool, with dual-format player that handles the very much
alive bluray format,and a
Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card
Yes, I can read the article.
what the hell does a htpc need a core i7 for? especially with such a high power consumption
ION ftw!
Actually, for playing x264 encoded 1080p AVCs... the more processor the better. Virtually any modern proc/video card will play blu-ray or hd-dvd 1080p no problem, but re-encoded (with x264), they seem to need more power. Also, you can use it to rip blu rays, hd-dvds which normally take anywhere from 12-24 hours on a core2duo. You can never have too much processor for media related functions.
@Mike: I play 1080p x264-encoded HD videos all the time. I have an older AMD X2 6000+ @ 3.0GHz with an 8-series GeForce card. It plays fine, no skipping at all. A Core i7 is DEFINITELY overkill for this scenario.
As for ripping, I'll agree with you there. Even on a $1000 Core i7, ripping an HD-DVD/Blu-ray to x264 takes an obscene amount of time (3-5 hours). But I wouldn't want to rip on my HTPC anyway, that's what the media server is for. ;)
yep. just buy the antec fusion micro case yourself and put your favourite lower power/heat kit in there yourself. Will set you back much less than a boutique pre-config. For those that dont want Vista, there are numerous Osource htpc alternatives which would make the build cheaper still.
A7
Forget HTPC's! Overpriced power guzzling PC's that are not even HD compliant (no HD sound, HDMI 1.3 for example, no True HD etc). Just get a Popcorn Hour for a couple hundred dollars (silent, low power, full HD support etc.)
Neat! What web browser does the Popcorn Hour use? Also, how do I install, say, Unreal Tournament 3 or Call of Duty 4 on it? Because those are all activities that my HTPC does that I would not want to give up.
"and Windows Vista runnin' the show."
let me correct that:
"and Windows Vista ruinin' the show."
Name a better media center than Vista, I've tryed plenty Front Row, Myth TV, Power Cinema, Plex.
None come close to the amount of stuff I can playback through VMC without having to resort to a keyboard and mouse.
But then like most ignorant idiots, you've never actually used Vista Media Center have you ? One of the few commendable parts of Vista.
I HAVE used Vista Media center, and it comes nowhere near being as full-featured as Plex. You control Plex using your Harmony remote without needing to buy an external IR receiver. It supports all codecs I have thrown at it without having to transcode or install codecs (like Vista MCE) and it auto pulls down information for the movies and TV Shows from IMDB and TheMovieDB.com.
They also support plugins now so you can watch Hulu, CollegeHumor, The Onion, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Pandora, etc etc etc. And you browse and install the plugins from within Plex, no hunting them down and then trying to install it like with MCE.
In every measurable way, Plex is better than Windows Vista MCE.
Thats not to say Vista MCE is bad, I am typing this on a Windows 7 machine, I have no problems with Windows. But don't go giving credit where its not fully due, there are better options out there. Plex may not have been as good when you tried it, but the current versions are better than anything I have used, and I have tried everything on your list plus a few other methods.
X-Fi drivers are total shit, especially in Vista... Total bloatware crap... argghhh.... like shit... installing x-fi drivers is like willingly installing a virus...
Didn't one of the companies involved once claim that it would be impossible to make a dual format (blu-ray/hddvd) drive?
Huh? Apart from the naff Kinetic logo this is just an Antec Fusion Black. No need to mention that the i7 is ridiculous overkill in this. I have an E8400 in mine and that's overkill...
However ours is also used for occasional gaming. At least games that work well with a wireless 360 controller and a single 1GB 4870.
How they get 6TB's in this case is however a mystery. OK, use the Western Digital 2TB units, just available (£250 a pop). But this case only has space for 2 3.5 HD's. We have 2TB's in ours (2 x 1TB) and external esata storage (this is of course also our torrent box.)
Anyway, all this for less than £800 using hq components throughout. I'm intrigued by Kinetics pricing to follow.
Multi format opticals (CD/DVD/HD/Blu) have also been around for some time, cost about £60-£70...
"There's no mention of a price, but we get the feeling that these are mostly reserved for those across the pond."
That sounded like those of us in Europe have twice the money Americans do. I must be doing something wrong then.
why put an i7 in something like this? all its going to be doing is streaming media and its only going to make it more expensive.
I need a new Xbox 360 to play with my HD DVD cause I might as well get a new one then buy a video card to support it.
Looks good except for the i7-overkill and the x-fi sound card.