I have had one for a couple of months now and use it with a usb DVB-t tv tuner and microsoft remote. I purchased direct from a company called fepaspot off ebay, they are based in hong kong and it arrived 6 days later via air freight. The model i have is the blu-ray one with 4gb ram and 500gb hd.
Performance is very good for Freeview HD and blu-ray under windows 7. Some high bit rate mkv's stuttered initially until I worked out all the hardware acceleration settings, now it all works well.
I highly recommend the unit, however, the new HT model you linked to is due soon and has built in remote and wireless that mine did not come with as standard
Interesting. I wasn't going to take anything not AMD 780G/790G into consideration, but this does look like a very powerful package. Did you have any concerns about the 2.5'' HDD reliability? Also, did yours come with Win7MC preinstalled?
I have been running mine overclocked at 2.1ghz instead of 1.6ghz standard setting, this is very easy to do in the bios. I haven't yet wound it back though my intial tests suggest that the standard clock speed is fine, however, whilst it runs warm I have not had any issues (room is around 18 degrees ambient). I have not measured any HDD temps, I also back up to a windows home server, so if the HDD dies , not a real issue, although, I am not too concerned as laptop drives are designed to oeprate in these conditions.
My machine came pre-installed win Win7, however, no license key, for me not an issue as I have a microsoft subscription. Reality is a new install should take under an hour anyway (plus updates)
I noticed that Freitasm and others are looking at the Dell unit with a similar size and would also be worth a look, though more expensive than the Asrock.
Parts came to around $600. So far running XP and Media Player Classic home cinema edition. Plays h.264 and MKV 1080p vids without the CPU breaking a sweat. Next part of the project is Win7 with a HD Home Run.
Also looking at getting composite/svideo into the box (an Antec ISK300-65 Mini-ITX Case) to record from Sky decoder, so any suggestions there for Media Centre compatible USB video capture devices...
As did I :) Except I went for the $375 one with the 90w DC PSU so I have a noiseless system, well apart from the HDD heads. No system fans either
My total was: Aywun A1-8989B - with enough space for 3 extra HDDs $75 shipped mobo $375 1.5TB WD Green Power 7200rpm HDD $190 Windows 7 Premium(part of my 3pack from US) $72 Pinnacle 73e USB tuner $90 2x 1GB XMS2 Corsair sticks @ 800mhz $100 $902
Gotta say the mobo is amazing, handles my PS3 Media server transcoding, my freeview PVR, and streams to both my PCs :) I use both the wireless and the 100mb ethernet and can stream to 3-4 sources at once :)
The case is fine too, really shiny, I've got an external USB slim dvd-rw drive, so i don't use an optical in it, which leaves me enough space for the next 2 HDDs to go into it, a 1.5TB and a 2TB to give me a nice total of 5TB for now
I have moved across the ditch. Now residing in Melbourne as a VOIP/Video Technical Trainer/Engineer.
Oh yeah, icogill, just wondering, have you overclocked yours to 2.1ghz yet? i'm thinking about doing it, but running it fanless at the moment is wonderful. The only way to tell it's on is to look at the power light, since the HDD is a green power and fluid dynamic bearing, you don't often hear it
As for the USB capture, this will run on 32bit Win7 http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=454214 I'm running 64bit on mine, so I don't know if it'll run :S
can anyone post pics of the Asrock system they have running? I can put some pics of mine up too if anyone wants them?
I have moved across the ditch. Now residing in Melbourne as a VOIP/Video Technical Trainer/Engineer.
Yeah, the Antec case also has a DC PSU which is nice. Just the one fan though and it's about as noisy as the Tivo it's sitting on (pretty quiet) Haven't overclocked it yet. I've got a generic USB capture device somewhere similar to the one you linked to, will give it a go... All a matter of having time :-)
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# 51964 1-Dec-2009 23:22
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