The
nettop might not be the most
riveting piece of machinery out there, but
ASRock's hoping to generate at least a small amount of buzz by outfitting its next trio with NVIDIA's
Ion graphics technology. Reportedly, the Ion 330HT, Ion 330Pro and Ion 330HT-BD will all ship with a dual-core 1.6GHz Atom 330 processor, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 7.1 channel audio, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI / VGA outputs, six USB 2.0 sockets and a powered eSATA port. The 330HT and 330HT-BD are both bundled with MCE remotes, while the latter also gets its DVD burner swapped out with a Blu-ray drive. There's no mention of a price or release just yet, but we're figuring that both of those points should be clarified shortly.
posted Oct 29th 2009 1:36AM
What if that one with the BD drive were ~$300? I would snag myself an early xmas present so fast...
PS: had a brain fart. I didn't mean the Dell Zino, I meant the EEE Boxes.
Was gonna say that the Zino has potential if it does ship with higher end parts at a reasonable price, but hit 'reply' too soon.
:)
Finally some ion nettops with built in IR and remote controls.. these are the perfect XBMC or Boxee boxes
Indeed. But I think I'll be waiting until Ion2 before I pull the trigger. Then I can finally retire my XBMC Xbox1, and have a pretty potent replacement for everything it does so well.
But for sure they will be overpriced
Though having a buit-in remote is a good idea, if you want to turn a first gen ASRock into a media center, you need an external tuner, most of which come with a remote, that also works with the PC.
http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=1652
@AtomicPlayboy: Unless you want a higher end gaming experience, the first gen IONs do alright. The 330 can do L4D at 720p.
If ASRock put a single half-height slot to obviate the need for an external tuner (or built a tuner into it - user removable for CableCARD adapters), this would be the best of breed (when compared to the Revo or the new Dell unit).
If the IR reciever is "generic" then that's good. Otherwise, you're still in the same position you would be otherwise.
The bundleware (remote) is fine so long as you actually like it.
eSATA? I'll take one of those thank you. I've been heavily considering one of these HTPCs, and it boiled down to the Asrock 330 or the new Acer AspireRevo, the latter winning out because of its eSATA port. Looks like I might end up getting the 330HT-BD now though.
How can an atom even power blueray or anything that uses 4 gigs of ram? O.o
A) Ion core supports h.264 decoding, so the CPU doesn't have to do much processing.
B) Dual core Atom n330 is 64 bit compatible.
Just keep in mind that the n330 is still an atom, I've been reading up on AVSForum where n330 users complain about MCE not being "snappy" as a CULV and Flash video I've heard mixed stuff.
Any non-accelerated video is a problem. DIVX is not so bad because it is less CPU intensive. Lower-end Flash is fine for this reason too. What turns the IONs into "slide projectors" is stiff like 720p Flash. St-st-st-stutter city.
It's the bee's knees for h264 in other containers including 720p and higher HD-PVR recordings.
...slightly noisy though. (asrock and revo both)
Does anybody know if these new dual core Atom processors can handle Hulu or not?
NO. They CANNOT.
Anand Shimpi over on anandtech tested an ASRock Atom 330 plus Ion overclocked to over 2GHz and it couldn't handle Hulu, either HQ or full screen. The reason is that currently Adobe Flash doesn't do much if any GPU offload. So scaling to full screen etc just kills the CPU.
It sounds like most of the ULV processors in the new thin 'n lights CAN handle Hulu in comparison. I assume even the single core versions.
This should all work out when Adobe updates Flash to allow GPU offloading. They've already demo'd Flash acceleration on Ion. I'll consider one of these for a TV-side internet streamer once Adobe actually ships this. Supposedly in the first quarter of 2010, but I'm not holding my breath.
If they take too long getting it done some momentum behind Silverlight or HTML 5 or ... just might kill them off.
I have the previous version w/o the remote and with 2Gb of ram. Hulu only works in the US, so I can't try it but all HD youtube clips work perfectly just like other hulu-like sites that stream movies and tv shows. Also works perfectly with XMBC and I had no problems watching full HD movies on my TV using the HDMI output. Also it seriously cut down on my electricity bill because it runs 24/7.
I have a asrock 330 OCed t o 2ghz.
All of the flash content including siverlight via netflix works fine.
The 1080p WMV/MKV content is pretty much impossible to watch unless you off load it to the GPU. Using DXVA the results are amazing. Flawlesss.
I built a mini HTPC a few weeks ago using the Zotac nVidia ION board, OCd to 2 ghz with 2 GB ram, Win7. I've run XBMC and Boxee on it but I'm still unable to view anything full screen running off of youtube, hulu and most other streaming sites. Also, I can't run any HD content over 720p through XBMC/Boxee, but works great when using Media Center. I think this is due to hardware acceleration not supported on XBMC on the Windows OS. I hear it works fine on Ubuntu.
I also have the ASRock Ion 330 Nettop. I've overclocked to 2.1GHz, and upgraded to 4GB RAM. Running Win7 RC & Windows Media Center. Did not go with Blu-Ray drive.
DVD's look great, ripped DVD's that are streaming from my MediaSmart Server look great, Netflix streaming looks pretty good, Amazon Unbox videos look ok. Internet TV throuh WMC looks....not good (standard def?) , but no stuttering. Hulu looks bad, and stutters so much I can't watch it.
Here's the link:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3566&p=3
Turns out it was a Zotac not ASRock Ion board, OC'd to 2.0GHz. Would *not* play Hulu HQ (480p) smoothly fullscreen on a 720p desktop, let alone a 1920x1080 desktop. So if you have your screen resolution set to watch 1080i content, which you CAN on the Ion as long as its not Flash, then you'll have to drop your screen resolution to watch Hulu with a decent frame rate if you want to watch full screen.
I don't know why everybody here is saying it works, but I'm taking Anand's word for it...
I'd much prefer a very small form factor like this with one of the new 45W AMD chips. That, 5750-like graphics and that's my media box.
The name ASRock makes me think of 30 Rock and Asus
That's not what I thought of...
Funny you would mention 30 Rock considering you probably can't watch it with this box.
Well, the latter probably has at least a little to do with the fact that ASUS is its parent company...
er i think these came out ages ago in Australia, :P...
I saw them online and the Blu-ray one costs $AU 675, the normal DVD one costs $AU 345...
So yeah!
Stefan: You are thinking about the "ASRock Nettop ION 330" version, which is without remote, with only 2GB ram, no eSATA and only 4 USB ports... But the old models had Atom 330 and ION, so there is really not a big difference performance-wise.
Does it have ASRock Instant Boot? if not.. ohhhh... soo slowww.
Available now, over here in the Republic of Korea.
http://english.gmarket.co.kr/challenge/neo_goods/goods.asp?goodscode=167229757
So where is the Dell Zino HD mini PC that we saw back in August?
That's the one I want to see tested for HD playback.
beautiful:
bluray, h264? yes!
hulu? sorry.
what year is this?
Not 1Q2010 apparently.
The NVIDIA reference design was MUCH smaller and was Pico-ITX form factor (fits into drive bay for optical drives).
I want THAT. Why is no one SELLING an ION platform in Pico-ITX form factor?
I hope the old one (sans remote) gets cheaper, and that they continue to ship without OS.