I just finally got a new flatscreen (Samsung LE 46A956D1M) and I am dismissing my old CRT TV. I've been planning to build my own totally fanless media center forever, but I saw this and I really like it. It also has a blue ray version, of course, so it really seems a good choice for a media center. Has anyone tried it? Specs look quite good, don't they? I wonder if it really is quiet...

I'll let you know. I'm setting one of these up to feed a flat screen at my church. I've only opened the packaging, however, not turned it on. It's very small and has nice styling to it. We mainly got it because it had onboard HDMI.

One possible MAJOR flaw with tiny systems, is that the built-in cooling fan has to be small to fit the small case.

And small fans are VERY NOISY!!! (heh, can you tell I had a small system with a tiny fan here once? )

So, in a shop, church hall, or office building, one may never hear the noise. But in a small, otherwise quiet, room at home.. things could be very different.

Now this particular Dell may be quieter than most small things with fans, but it's something to really try and figure out in advance.

Larger fans, running slowly, are more effective and a lot quieter than most small fans I've had here.

Cheers

Mmm.. does a DVB tuner card also figure into the media center plans? I suppose an external USB one could be used just fine with that cute little box.

Our best performing digital tuner here is a tiny USB gadget, so nothing wrong with those.

Another consideration is hard disk storage -- video recordings tend to be rather large.

Cheers

FWIW, El Reg reviewed one and said the noise is "more of a blow than a roar".

Peter

I saw a Studio Hybrid the other day at Costco, of all places. I stuck my ear to the fan on back, and could barely hear it. Of course, that was an idle machine.

I did a price comparison between a Mac mini and an equivalently-equipped Dell Studio Hybrid. The Dell came in about $150 cheaper, which is certainly a non-trivial difference. Of course, if you add Blu-ray and all the other options, you can make the Dell cost much more.

Mark,

As to HDD, that's not an issue I have, as the storage is on a different server that the media center would be connected to (1Gbps). Which is also why I am ok with the lack of ESATA ports on the Studio Hybrid.

As to DVB and noise, yes, you're right: expandability is the big issue I have here, actually. A "real" case, even a "desktop" one(there are many nice ones), is much more expandable and allows to assembrle a completely fanless PC.

If you say that Digital Tuner via USB works well, then that's one less problem. But what about SAT decoders? I am not aware of any USB one that also is compatible with pay per view cards that Sky uses here. Not that I have searched much, though.

IMO, the best solution for a media center at this time is to use a client-server setup. The client can be a fanless, diskless streaming device with a remote controllable UI. The server would host the media as well as handle recording duties if you want PVR functionality.

This will be the lowest cost solution and the cleanest looking install around your TV. To have something perform as well using only a single computer will require a pretty expensive fanless case, internal hard drive enclosures for that case (for noise and heat dissipation), a super-fast processor coupled with a super-fast graphics card with the ability to assist the CPU with the video decoding. I suppose you might also be able to find a dedicated decode accelerator board. It's pretty expensive (in CPU power) to decode high resolution H.264

The client streamers use integrated chips with support for decoding a number of video and audio formats, coupled with features for HDMI output as well.

There are a number of playback-only devices available for streaming with even more on the way. Notable ones are from Netgear, DLink and of course Popcorn hour which has been mentioned before. SageTV just released their new box which can now be used without a SageTV server. The only one that I know of that can also play live TV and directly control recording software on the server is SageTV's product. Though Windows Media Exntenders might also provide this capability for MCE. Not sure if there's something else out there to do the same thing with MythTV and the like.

I've ordered a SageTV Media Theater and will disconnect my SageTV computer/server from the TV as soon as it arrives. This means I can also stop running the SageTV front-end application on that system, leaving it only with the recording service active and more free CPU time.

Seems to me that the middle ground is easily doable: a diskless system that accesses all of its data from a remote fileserver. It still has the heat from the CPU and video card, but removing the hard drive(s) should help significantly.

Any NVidia chipset from the past couple of years can decode H.264 in hardware, with minimal CPU usage. Heck, even my lowly fanless GF6200 card here can do it.

I'm more interested in MPEG2 decoding, which "duke" currently does in software here. Over the holidays I may upgrade it to latest MythTV-svn (bleeding edge), which has good support for the NVidia hardware decoding stuff.

Cheers

I've never been able to spec out any type of PC for less than $200 (what many of the extenders cost).

The link seems to indicate only recent (2007+) chipsets can handle higher resolution video with minimal CPU use. It also seems to indicate that these benefits are more pronounced on mid to high end products, not the lower end. That means potentially paying close to $100 for a video card. Even the 6200 I had last week was $70



You might want to look at the AMD/ATI MPEG 2 features. MPEG2 HD is definitely taxing.

The capture system requires very little CPU power, no GPU power and only moderate disk performance, even for multiple simultaneous record and playback streams. I find it optimal even for one viewing location, and when I add another, it's a no-brainer as I'll be able to access the exact same interface with the very same recorded and live content regardless of where I'm sitting.

I haven't found any way to BYO streaming appliance as cheap as buying one premade. Certainly not with typical motherboards and CPUs. One option would be to get something like a Popcorn internal board and then run alternate software on it (since it runs on some linux I believe)

The GF6 series is getting long in the tooth these days -- at least 3-4 years old. And even those have HD decode support for MPEG2, though perhaps less acceleration for HD H.264. Duke's GF6200 fanless card was about $40 when we got it over two years ago.

Still, for situations where vendor lock-in and restricted customization are not of concern, a commercial "media extender" definitely looks like a good choice.

Cheers

Here's the blow-by-blow hardware feature list (PDF) for all NVidia chips that have hardware mpeg2/h.264 decoding.

Most/All of these Client/Server based Media Centers do not include a DVD/Blue Ray player. Mostly, they won't let you remove the region coding. Any PC can do so.

I have plenty of Region 1 DVDs, and of course a lot of Region 2s (EU), so I'd love to have a PC connected to my TV just for the flexibility that i offers. Of course, there a cost associated to that.

Thanks Mark, that's useful! I see there's no reference to the 9xxx series. I think this is a very nice solution, assuming it comes with the same hardware decoding capabilities. Very powerful and fanless. Solutions like this make me tend more to the standard case rather than systems like the Studio Hybrid.

Once you've ripped the DVD (or BluRay) you can play it stream it from the server to any client just like any other digital media. If you want to play physical disks, then any $20 DVD player can do that.

Personally, I don't use disc-based media any more for playback.

I am not ready yet for ripping DVDs or BlueRays.
How big a HDD would you need to keep your entire DVD or BR collection? If I have to select what to store and what not, I personally prefer to stay with physical disk and wait for better days.
Also, there's no $20 BlueRay player yet. And, there's no multiregion one at all, as far as I know. Which means two readers.