Jasper
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 11:23 AM |
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Asrock Media PC - great piece of kit.
For a few years now I'd been looking forward to the time I can have a full PC experience on my lounge plasma for not too much money.
For a couple of years now I've been using a Popcorn Hour to watch HD movies piped in from my main PC in my office via Cat5.
So last week I took the plunge and bought an Asrock media PC to go under the telly. It's about £300 from Scan, and whilst it only has a 1.6Ghz
Atom processesor, it's able to share the video processes role with the built in Nvidia graphics card.
So with a bit of fiddling around - latest Nvidia and Adobe Flash drivers, and a better set of codecs for Windows Media Player/Centre, Codec AV2, it
now plays all movie formats including HD .mkv's with full DTS sound out through an optical cable to the amp. It also plays and streams BBC
iPlayer and Youtube in HD, and does all the other usual PC stuff. I control it with a cheap wireless mini keyboard/mouse from Keytronic.
It's also very small, very nice looking in it's shiny black case, very low power usage, and almost completely silent - great for leaving
on all the time for Torrents. And it has room inside for a second HDD, (already has a 350Gb one built in) so I'll put the big 1Tb one from my
office PC with all my movies and pictures on in it tonight.
So if anybody else is thinking of taking the plunge I can only recommend it!
If you're not living life on the edge you're taking up too much room.
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dhutch
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 11:36 AM |
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Sounds pretty good, does it have a freivew tuner in it or anything like that?
At home we've got a HDD recorder at home the fairly spot on, and will also play mpeg/avi/divx/wmv etc off a dvd (inc RW and RAM) but it annoys
the hell of me that it doesnt have a network socket on the back of it for the sake of £20, so to get it from a pc or the nas drive the only method is
to burn a rw dvd.
- Its also our only freeview tuner so some times when you sit down to watch something it busy recording some shite for my sister which is using the
tuner. Again, why it doesnt have two for the extra £20 again i just dont know. But at the time(4years ago maybe) it was the best of the lot assumign
you cap'ed the budget at sub £500.
Daniel
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Jasper
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 12:11 PM |
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No freeview tuner, but then I wouldn't use it to replace my Freesat PVR anyway. But like you, I used to have to burn all donwloaded, copied
DVD's to disk to play them in the lounge, then I got the Popcorn Hour, but this just does it all so much better.
And yes, it's just a regular PC, so you can put a tuner card in it.
It does run Windows Media Centre, and that has various free and pay channels on it...
[Edited on 17/4/10 by Jasper]
If you're not living life on the edge you're taking up too much room.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 12:47 PM |
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Try xbmc....
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Jasper
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 01:02 PM |
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I remember hearing about xmbc a while ago, I'm presuming it's nicer to use that Media Centre, which ain't that great that's
for sure.
I'll have a play with that when I get home - cheers ..... 
If you're not living life on the edge you're taking up too much room.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 03:01 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Jasper
I remember hearing about xmbc a while ago, I'm presuming it's nicer to use that Media Centre, which ain't that great that's
for sure.
I'll have a play with that when I get home - cheers .....
ohhh.yes...have my bedroom dual boot - 1 image is XBMC Live, the other Windows.
If you've a basic atom processor, look at the broadcom accelerator card (about £30) which, when coupled with XBMC Live, will enable you to
playback FullHD content.
You should also be able to get the MC Remote to work with it...
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 03:06 PM |
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PS I was looking at a Revo 3610 a while ago...came in about £200 but missing some of the bells and whistles found on the Asrock...
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 03:06 PM |
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XMBC on Asrock setup Guide
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Jasper
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 03:38 PM |
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Cheers mate, the Asrock plays HD fine it it uses the GPU processor as well as the CPU. The only thing it still struggles with is the Flash player the
BBC iPlayer uses, it's plays back the normal def, but is still struggling with HD, but they are working on it!
I've got a Logitech Harmony remote, so that should work it all fine, though I've yet to set it up. And i use a Keysonic wireless mini
keyboard combo as well.
Mind you, I don't want it to boot straight into the xmbc, can I just run it as a programme from my desk top like WMC?
[Edited on 17/4/10 by Jasper]
If you're not living life on the edge you're taking up too much room.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 09:59 PM |
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quote:
Originally posted by Jasper
Cheers mate, the Asrock plays HD fine it it uses the GPU processor as well as the CPU. The only thing it still struggles with is the Flash player the
BBC iPlayer uses, it's plays back the normal def, but is still struggling with HD, but they are working on it!
I've got a Logitech Harmony remote, so that should work it all fine, though I've yet to set it up. And i use a Keysonic wireless mini
keyboard combo as well.
Mind you, I don't want it to boot straight into the xmbc, can I just run it as a programme from my desk top like WMC?
[Edited on 17/4/10 by Jasper]
Yes but you won't (yet) get the GPU acceleration.
Best option at the moment is to have a dual boot - either shrink your windows partition a bit, or boot xbmc from the USB port
Do a search on stevebubs on the forum for how to get a dual boot working properly.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 17/4/10 at 10:01 PM |
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I tell a lie...
Bleeding edge code includes acceleration
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Jasper
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| posted on 19/4/10 at 08:36 AM |
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Cheers mate, that's perfect, plays HD movies smoothly now. I'd rather it didn't boot straight into xmbc, as I use Windows a lot on
this machine.
If you're not living life on the edge you're taking up too much room.
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stevebubs
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| posted on 23/4/10 at 02:56 AM |
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This is useful for making sure you have the right info for your media..
Media Companion
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