Small form factor? Check. Low power consumption married to 1080p video playback capabilities? Of course. Quiet cooling? Naturally. Those are the basic requirements for, and their fulfillment is the means by which we judge, a good home theater pc. They're also the highlights of
Zotac's Ion 2-powered
ZBOX HD-ID11 barebone (you have to add your own RAM, storage and OS) nettop, which recently visited
AnandTech's labs for some old fashioned review action. It's a highly illuminating read, particularly for those interested in the differences between NVIDIA's Ion generations, which throws up a mixed bag of results. While you'll be quite alright watching Full HD Blu-rays on the ZBOX, Flash hardware acceleration -- yeah,
that old nugget again -- is not yet implemented well enough, resulting in a maximum of 480p resolution before Hulu streams started glitching out on the reviewer. A June driver update from NVIDIA should rectify this issue, and we're encouraged to wait it out and see what we might see then. In the mean time, you can just delve into the complete analysis which awaits at the link below.
[Thanks, Wowzers]
posted May 7th 2010 11:44AM
That "old nugget" is getting really annoying now!
@who said what
Just throw XBMC on it and install the YouTube plugin, and it will the vid's through it's own codec. My XBMC setup does 720p youtube video without a hitch (note: this is under Linux, no idea how well it works on Windows).
@drange
Just realized that you guys want to watch Hulu too, my bad. In that case: let's all hope Flash video dies really, really soon.
@drange Good luck with those meme references.
I'll wait for the Acer Revo w/Ion 2.
So sad. I was thinking of getting this for HTPC but I decided to just build my own.
@max1001
Care to share the specs and price? At this point these things should be coming out soon but I've been contemplating building my own as well...
@giyad
Bgears BG01176 b-Envi Aluminum/Plastic Mini Tower Case Black
Antec Earthwatts EA 430D Green PSU 430w ATX Power Supply
AMD x2 7850, asus m2n68-am plus, gskill 2gb (combo deal from NewEgg)
MSI 4550
I just bought whatever was on sale at the moment. Everything mention above is $220 after rebate.
@max1001
Meh way too big for my liking. Also it's a regular cpu.. I want something nearly silent and low form-factor.
@max1001
Did you get everything from Newegg?
@Plazmic Flame
NO, Mwave, ZipZoomFly and Newegg.
@bstock
I tried to find a smaller case but they are very rare. As for the noise issue, I doubt this will get loud. I don't have to have it on 24/7 anyway. It will be turn on as needed.
@max1001
And what? 60 dB to boast as well...
@bstock Shuttle XS35 is an ION 2 box which is fanless although not out yet. It also looks better in my opinion.
This headline leaves me absolutely clueless. What is this thing?!?!
@SeeKo
Yeah, I know... It's too bad they didn't write a short article under the headline!
@kreg37 lmao
Hardware acceleration doesn't seem to be well implemented on Hulu. My aging desktop can stream 1080P content on youtube, but I can't get smooth video on hulu at any resolution.
@Maxximtl No, you're not getting 1080p on YouTube first of all because it's impossible (since it maxes out at 720p), but also because you're admitted "aging desktop" is spitting back at you whatever it can handle; Netflix and Silverlight throttle down the resolution from HD to make it manageable. Bad comparison.
Isn't 480p as high as most Hulu videos go anyway?
@Ksult1
If you are playing said 480p video in a window and then stretch said window it'll crawl.
"Even 480p content won't play smoothly if you scale it up to too large of a window." From the Anandtech site
That sucks. I guess that narrows my choice to two items for my living room set up, an ion1 set up or a WD live box.
Dell Zino HD. Nuff said. Why would you get an Atom+Ion when you can get an Athlon dual core and a discreet graphics card in a similar form factor and price? That would just be silly.
@Nitesh
Because atom + ion runs cool and quiet, and should be more than enough if you only use it as an HTPC? My Ion-based home-server/HTPC is always on, so the fact that it only uses 20W under full load and not much more then 10W when idle, is a big plus. 1080p video works beautifully on it, but then again, I don't watch Flash-based video with it.
@drange
The Zino HD is also nearly completely silent, and has a similar power footprint.
@Nitesh I agree. Zino HD is superior especially with a good discount. I have the highest dual-core cpu along with the discreet gpu that dell offers. It can play HD video within flash smoothly even without gpu acceleration (but the load on the cpu drops dramatically with flash 10.1). Best of all, Media Center's interface is always smooth even when you’re playing 1080p video in the background....atom+ion combos crawl in the same situation.
@Nitesh
Actually, an AM3 single-core runs at 45w TPD. That CPU runs two times faster or better than the average Atom, and I believe should run about one and a half times faster than the dual-core Pineview. Also note that there are Athlon dual-cores which, in my opinion, should be perfect for an HTPC because they can handle more than enough to compensate for bad graphics on whatever motherboard you get. Such a build should easily be able to do fairly well on anything and more you would throw at an HTPC. I came up with a build (with a blu-ray burner, mind you) and OEM Windows at about $640. Naturally, 2 GB of memory, a strong Athlon Dual-core, and a nice Biostar Micro-Atx Motherboard. Quite a good case, looks great in the pictures and is smaller than an average receiver.
Just for a heads-up, I put a 140 dollar case with IR and Windows Media support as the case and power supply. Frugal users could come up with a lower price easily. Such a system could be set up entirely within online sites.
I want one of these with a dual channel ATSC HD tuner. OTA and online FTW!
I thought Hulu's max stream was already 480p. Is there some sort of higher def feed that I don't know how to access?
Rather build a mini-ITX HTPC around the core i3. Get full support for HD playback, quiet, efficient, and full HD Audio bitstream support. This can easily be done for under $500
I have the Revo 3610, with the dual core atom and ION1 and it streams HULU perfectly, no problem. I just allocated additional memory for the graphic's card and it doesnt have a single problem with anything!
@michaelad
I'm running a Atom N330 + ION Windows 7 32-bit build and I have not had much success streaming Hulu fullscreen from Hulu Desktop.. I get a flickering when I have it in full screen mode. Even windowed at 1080p resolution, it is choppy. I'm wondering if there is something I can do to improve Hulu performance.
@infinityPlusOne Yes, you have to install the correct version of Flash 10 beta and the correct Nvidia driver.
I read through this blog and found out exactly what i needed to know. http://www.pauljroberts.com/my-personal-revo-3610-set-up-that-works-well
let us know how it goes?
@infinityPlusOne more specifically everything in this download
http://www.pauljroberts.com/flash-beta-10-1-1p-files-for-revo-ion
The bad, Android app does not show the link.
@Wekkel
Usually, you need to click on the image to link out to the source. That's on the iPhone app anyway.
Hth
Wow. So the review drops the bomb that Zotac got greedy - a second time. As Engadget reported first, the retail price was originally going to be $209. People got excited like that, so behaving like opportunists, Zotac jacked up the price rather quickly to $239. And Anandtech reports now that they got even more greedy (hedging the interest of enthusiasts) and jacked up the price again to $259. Funny what can happen in a month or two: price shoots up 25%, reviews go eh, and consumers like me get pissed at Zotac's pricing games and bail on the product. Good job, Zotac.
Up now at the 'egg. Price still sneaked up but not all the way to the (new) limit.
250 + Harddrive + Memory + Headache? Its easier to get $499 Refurb Mac Mini, put Win7 64 and it will for SURE play 1080p content, Headache free. Oh Yeah, and it is smaller than this useless thing!