Viako's Ion-equipped HTPC is more like an HD-capable nettop
By Darren Murph 
posted Aug 12th 2009 6:19AM
posted Aug 12th 2009 6:19AM
[Via AVING]
posted Aug 12th 2009 6:19AM
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Looks promising, but 320GB HD? Really? Go for the gusto, man...put a full terabyte in there. 320GB wouldn't hold all my music and photos let alone my movies.
All of my music is on (and most of my movies have been ripped to) my home server. I don't want to have to transfer stuff to another machine so 320GB doesn't bother me so much. As long as this thing can stream from my home server and isn't too terribly expensive, I may give it a go.
Yeah, screw hard drive space on a machine like this. I'd be fine with 160. Just give me gigabit LAN and I'm happy.
The semantics are critical lest fanboy and hater alike start getting the lip wobble going and little fists clenching cause something might be crossing categories.
I don't think there are fanboys for terminology. I think "idiots" is the word.
hey..it blends..quite well actually!
how does this match with egreat m32b?
- 200usd
- HDMI, usb, esata
-component , hdmi
-spdif
-drive capacity upto 1.5tb
-optional dvd/bluray drive
-10/100 lan connection
aluminum case...
10/100? Is it 2002? Let's get some gigabit in these things. Blu-ray doesn't stream itself.
I have a Tivo Series 3...with 2 HD cable cards...800gb of total storage...what the hell do I need this thing for?
I am in the same boat you are. But that doesn't mean EVERYONE is. :-)
You only have 800G? My MythTV has 2.5TB. If you are recording a lot of HD
content and can't compress it in some way, 800G is really not that impressive.
This Tivo also wont work with Dish or DirecTV. (Yes my local landline monopoly
really sucks).
How well does that Tivo do at playing back iTunes type video files? DVD Rips? BD Rips?
What happens when you want to go in the other room?
Being tied to the living room TV is so Ozzie and Harriet.
you rock!
That remote looks like crap. And a 320HD? I have more porno than that.
That remote is the same one that comes with the soundgraph "imon inside" IR controller for PCs. (aka Antec veris basic).
Backplate on the website looks just like that of the Zotac IONITX board, which is really nice.
The thing I'm interested in is the cases though.. Those are really nice cases, and I haven't been able to find anything that nice in the crazy-small sizes.
If the price is reasonable, these could be really popular among the HTPC crowd. I know I would want one. Especially if the board is indeed Zotac's.
Nice case. I've tested the n330 version of this board and although it performs very nicely with just about anything HD you have, it'll be extremely choppy with Hulu desktop (I use it through a shortcut in the MC interface) and Netflix. Those 2 apps are such CPU hogs the Atom processor can't keep up. That's a show stopper for me.
Sorry, when you're talking about HTPC, go right to the price. After that...we'll talk.
If you want a real HTPC, you're gonna need something that'll handle flash. This doesn't count.
I am thinking of building my own if I can find a case I like, max out the ram, but in 2 1TB drives in a raid O array, maybe overclock the CPU/GPU.
Yea HTPC is a project for me this year, gotta start looking at parts and prices.
The only ways to get a really good HTPC are to build it yourself (easy to do for under $500) or spend over $1000 a well build commercial product.
Until Adobe and others fix their hardware acceleration issues, nettops using these early Atom processors will remain fairly useless as HTPC's.
But, that case is beautiful. I wonder how much they'd want for just the case. hmm...?