Never bought a Dell PC for myself before, but I had been looking at one of these as a possible replacement for my gigantic (by comparison), loud, energy-inefficient home theater PC.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.hardware.info%2Fnews%2FDell_Inspiron_Zino_HD_01.jpg&hash=509a8e318e485412dec121c52c08432bd78918f4)
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=DDDOUB1
They put the base model on sale for $199 today w/ free shipping. With the 20% Bing cashback, it effectively becomes $160 before tax. I kicked in the extra $30 for the dual-core processor but I left everything else as is. I can upgrade the OS & memory on my own. I may also put a blu-ray drive in it.
Hopefully it handles 720p content okay. If not, it should do fine as a Home Server.
Dell is a bit...eww....But it is nice and small...I miss a variety in PC cases.
Quote from: Tyr on November 28, 2009, 07:14:58 PM
Dell is a bit...eww....But it is nice and small...I miss a variety in PC cases.
Never used their consumer-grade stuff, but their business machines I've used have all been solid, including the laptop I'm using right now.
This thing is about as low-end as you can get (it's basically a poor man's Mac Mini), but as long as it can do basic PC stuff and handle media okay, I'll be happy.
My company is all HP in terms of laptops and they seem to be pretty good. I have a work HP mini sitting on my desk right now.
I noticed Dell absorbed Perot systems.
I might buy one of these. I like the idea of a cheap mac mini...plus when I last looked at the mac mini (today), it looked as though I had to buy a separate cable for vga...
I am occasionally intrigued by the idea of buying a Mac mini.
Quote from: Barrister on November 29, 2009, 10:29:01 PM
I am occasionally intrigued by the idea of buying a Mac mini.
Yeah, I mean totally unnecessary but that's the point of having cash, no?
Quote from: garbon on November 29, 2009, 09:33:15 PM
I might buy one of these. I like the idea of a cheap mac mini...plus when I last looked at the mac mini (today), it looked as though I had to buy a separate cable for vga...
This:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa248.e.akamai.net%2F7%2F248%2F2041%2F1613%2Fas-images.apple.com%2Fis%2Fimage%2FAppleInc%2FMB572_AV1%3Fwid%3D326%26amp%3Bhei%3D326%26amp%3Bfmt%3Djpeg%26amp%3Bqlt%3D95%26amp%3Bop_sharpen%3D0%26amp%3BresMode%3Dbicub%26amp%3Bop_usm%3D0.5%2C0.5%2C0%2C0%26amp%3BiccEmbed%3D0%26amp%3Blayer%3Dcomp&hash=5c8afc3549bac2da99e1e0a35ac1657aefd23b33)
I've had a mac mini since 2005. It's been a delight. Use VGA monitor with it.
How do you plan on getting stuff onto the media pc though I wonder?
Surely you will normally be using another computer and thus when you download things it is with that other computer.
Do you have a central server at home? (blimey if so)
Quote from: Tyr on December 01, 2009, 08:37:00 AM
How do you plan on getting stuff onto the media pc though I wonder?
Every which way :P As with my current home theater PC, some stuff I will download directly to it, some stuff I will stream from the internet, and some stuff I will stream/copy from my 'main' computer.
QuoteSurely you will normally be using another computer and thus when you download things it is with that other computer.
Does it matter? :unsure:
Quote
Do you have a central server at home? (blimey if so)
Not yet, but that may soon change. My main desktop PC in the office is pulling double-duty as my primary PC and a server. It's getting old, though, and I'm going to need to offload some of those functions.
As it stands, my main PC is a Tivo Desktop server (moves content to & from both of my Tivos) and also serves media through Zune, WMP, and PlayOn interfaces. I also use my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender, streaming from that PC. I did at least uninstall Orb :D
Why is Jos acting like home networking is something new? :unsure:
Quote from: citizen k on December 01, 2009, 04:42:56 AM
I've had a mac mini since 2005. It's been a delight. Use VGA monitor with it.
Which is aggravating. More expensive and I have to buy extra parts? No, thanks.
Quote from: garbon on December 01, 2009, 01:05:46 PM
Why is Jos acting like home networking is something new? :unsure:
Speaking of which, I never thought I'd hit this point, but I'm actually hitting some bottlenecks from time to time with my wired ethernet home network. Once I get this thing up & running, I might upgrade my router & switches to gigabit, since my PCs and actual wiring support it.
I was at staples today, and saw a Athlon dual core laptop for 399 bucks. Decided to pick it up:
http://www.staples.com/Compaq-Presario-CQ61-313us-Laptop/product_828743_HC2?cmArea=SEARCH
Nice machine, but I had to make the backup recovery disks myself. Cheap fucks.
Quote from: Ed Anger on December 03, 2009, 04:27:45 PM
I was at staples today, and saw a Athlon dual core laptop for 399 bucks. Decided to pick it up:
http://www.staples.com/Compaq-Presario-CQ61-313us-Laptop/product_828743_HC2?cmArea=SEARCH
Nice machine, but I had to make the backup recovery disks myself. Cheap fucks.
Aside from the card reader and the webcam, that could be a sister lappy to my Toshiba, except I have an Athlon QL-65 instead of an M300 (slightly faster), and it came with 32-bit Windows.
Soon as I can, I'm switching to 64-bit and putting more RAM in.
Quote from: derspiess on November 27, 2009, 09:32:13 PM
Never bought a Dell PC for myself before, but I had been looking at one of these as a possible replacement for my gigantic (by comparison), loud, energy-inefficient home theater PC.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.hardware.info%2Fnews%2FDell_Inspiron_Zino_HD_01.jpg&hash=509a8e318e485412dec121c52c08432bd78918f4)
http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=DDDOUB1
They put the base model on sale for $199 today w/ free shipping. With the 20% Bing cashback, it effectively becomes $160 before tax. I kicked in the extra $30 for the dual-core processor but I left everything else as is. I can upgrade the OS & memory on my own. I may also put a blu-ray drive in it.
Hopefully it handles 720p content okay. If not, it should do fine as a Home Server.
I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on this - I was looking at the exact same model for the office just yesterday (we just need a very basic machine to install Boxee etc. on to try out user interfaces).
Quote from: bogh on December 04, 2009, 12:35:01 PM
I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on this - I was looking at the exact same model for the office just yesterday (we just need a very basic machine to install Boxee etc. on to try out user interfaces).
I'm supposed to have it by around the 17th (went with free shipping, so I wasn't expecting to get it from Dell in record time) & I plan to test it out extensively. It is shipping with Vista Basic :D & I opted not to go with the very reasonable $30 Win7 upgrade because I'll have a Win7 license to use on it. But for the hell of it I'm going to see how it performs with Vista before I do anything.
I went with the standard on-board graphics & I hope I don't regret it. From what I read though it should handle 720p video fine. I plan to up the RAM to at least 4GB and may upgrade the hard drive as well. I'm now leaning against adding a Blu-ray drive, since it will be sitting right next to an actual Blu-ray player :lol:
I'm going to stress-test it with high bitrate 1080p video just to see how it does; I'll let you know how it turns out.
bogh, I dug a little deeper & found the support/technical docs on Dell's site (they're listed under "Inspiron 400"). Found that all configurations should support Blu-ray playback up to 1080p, and will output 5.1 AC3 & DTS through the HDMI port (makes things infinitely easier for me).
The two memory slots will handle up to 8gb of DDR2, but the model I opted for will not have a video card slot-- I really hope it handles HD with the onboard HD3200 without a hitch, 'cuz I'm locked into it.
And apparently it has an internal wifi card, possible N?
Anywho, here's all the doc: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp400/en/index.htm?ACD=10550055-3136390-&AID=3136390
Let us know how it goes.
I've been tempted at times to buy a mac Mini to act as a kind of home server for media and other files. Perhaps hook it up in the kitchen so it could be used for light webbrowsing (mostly for recipes) and media playback.
But I don't know if it could really do what I want it to do, at least quickly and easily...
Quote from: derspiess on December 04, 2009, 05:38:31 PM
bogh, I dug a little deeper & found the support/technical docs on Dell's site (they're listed under "Inspiron 400"). Found that all configurations should support Blu-ray playback up to 1080p, and will output 5.1 AC3 & DTS through the HDMI port (makes things infinitely easier for me).
The two memory slots will handle up to 8gb of DDR2, but the model I opted for will not have a memory card slot-- I really hope it handles HD with the onboard HD3200 without a hitch, 'cuz I'm locked into it.
And apparently it has an internal wifi card, possible N?
Anywho, here's all the doc: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/insp400/en/index.htm?ACD=10550055-3136390-&AID=3136390
Thanks, I may go ahead and order it next week anyway, looks fine for a Windows 7 / Boxee outfit. But by all means keep me posted.
If you need HDMI cables, Woot.com has some fairly nice ones for a pretty good price (today only, of course).
Fixed my post from Friday. I meant to say the model I ordered will not have a *video* card slot-- it should have two DDR2 memory slots.
It shipped yesterday & has an estimated delivery date of 12/10 :cool:
Quote from: garbon on December 01, 2009, 01:05:46 PM
Why is Jos acting like home networking is something new? :unsure:
It is to me.
Okay, got my Zino HD yesterday, 2 days after the estimated delivery date. Dell seems to do a crappy job shipping stuff promptly unless you're a business, so no surprise.
Anywho, it was a sort of clandestine unboxing. Not trying to completely conceal it from the wife, but not trying to overemphasize it, either. It looks pretty nondescript with my other A/V stuff; about the same size as my Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive (though a little taller. It came with a keyboard & mouse I won't be using with it, as well as a driver disk and recovery disk with the OS.
It uses a laptop power supply, and it also uses laptop (SODIMM) memory & a laptop-sized optical drive. I didn't opt for a wifi card, but I believe it has an open internal PCI-E slot for it.
I opted for the Vista Basic OS since i have a Win7 license to use with it. For the hell of it, I played around with configuring it to see how it would perform. Performance was good, even before I uninstalled the Dell crapware that came with it. I connected the power, Cat6 cable, MCE IR keyboard, and HDMI cable & I was ready to roll.
Only real issue I ran into was that the screen image was smaller than my HDTV's actual screen. It is a 37" 720p display (1366x768 native resolution) and no matter what resolution I tried, I got the same result. Could not get Catalyst Control Center to run for me on Vista to tweak the overscan settings to stretch the image back out. Everything else seemed okay-- I got audio out through HDMI with no problems at all.
So at this point I gave up & loaded Win7. After loading drivers, updates, etc. I went into CCC and adjusted overscan to fit the screen image to my display. Display looks good now, but I can't tell for sure if the pixels match 1:1. May have to tweak a little more-- maybe it's just me or the default wallpaper, but colors don't look as vibrant as they did with my older, bigger HTPC that connected via VGA.
Loaded up Windows Media Center & got the 5.1 sound & my HDTV tuners (both USB-- I can't use my PCI tuners) configured. WMC runs way, way better for me on this box than it ever did for me under any OS on any PC I've owned.
Performance in general is very, very snappy with this little PC. I dl'ed & installed the divx codec & apps and also installed boxee to try out, but I need to resist the temptation to load it up with too many apps (as I have with my main PC).
I streamed some 720 .mkv and .wmv files & the system handled them fine. Need to try out a few more formats, but results so far are encouraging. At this point I do not regret keeping the default configuration for most of the components.
For anyone curious, here are the specs:
* Processor: AMD 3250e (dual core, 1MB L2, 1.5GHz)
* Chipset: AMD 780G
* Memory: 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SODIMM (will upgrade to at least 4gb later)
* Video: ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 (integrated into chipset)
* Audio: 5.1 DD/DTS over HDMI (HD3200)
* Optical drive: 12.7mm (standard laptop) SATA DVD+/-RW drive
* Hard Disk: Standard 3.5" 250gb SATA hard drive (will upgrade to 1TB at some point)
Prices on the Dell Zino HD range from $199 (sale prices on base config) to ~$650 (all the bells & whistles). My configuration was base, except for the processor upgrade. It was about $244 after tax w/ free shipping, which will effectively be $195 after I get my Bing cashback.
Going to give boxee a try, and will also see if I can stress-test it with some more high def content. But if my experience thus far holds up, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap home theater PC or desktop for non-gaming duties.
I might be interesting in a player for streaming media, but I was thinking of maybe getting a chipped XBOX 360. Is there any reason why a PC would be better than an XBOX for streaming media?
A pc would be more flexible/customizable, and you'd have more codec support. Plus you could do all the normal pc stuff, and could repurpose it for other duties later.
Customization is why I'd want it chipped. I've been looking at the Xbox Media Player (http://xbmc.org/about/) which is supposed to be able to play most stuff. Already have two PCs but I don't have a console so the additional console use would be of more interest to me than the additional pc use. But I'm a bit wary after hearing of Xboxs apparently breaking down all the time, while a PC would (presumably) last me longer. And I *could* play emulator games on the PC (already have usb gamepads).
Quote from: Pat on December 14, 2009, 04:52:43 PM
Customization is why I'd want it chipped. I've been looking at the Xbox Media Player (http://xbmc.org/about/) which is supposed to be able to play most stuff.
Ah, gotcha. I didn't know the 360 ran xbmc. Still, I would think a PC would be infinitely more customizable
QuoteAlready have two PCs but I don't have a console so the additional console use would be of more interest to me than the additional pc use. But I'm a bit wary after hearing of Xboxs apparently breaking down all the time, while a PC would (presumably) last me longer. And I *could* play emulator games on the PC (already have usb gamepads).
The 360 is an excellent gaming console-- if that were a significant factor in your decision, I would definitely go for the 360. The newer chipset seems to have fixed the overheating issues, and it comes with a huge warranty anyway in case something does happen.
Just be aware that MS is cracking down pretty hard on any modded 360 consoles-- the worst they can do is cancel your Xbox Live account & ban your console from online gaming, but it's something to be aware of.
I don't know if the 360 runs xbmc, I only assumed that it would since xbmc has xbox in it's name :blush:
After looking into it, it seems it *doesn't* run on the 360.
But on the other hand I assume a chipped original xbox, which *does* support xbmc, would be quite cheap by now. But on the other hand the original xbox might not be much good for HD content. I'll have to think about it and try to find some more info...
Quote from: Pat on December 15, 2009, 01:55:45 PM
I don't know if the 360 runs xbmc, I only assumed that it would since xbmc has xbox in it's name :blush:
After looking into it, it seems it *doesn't* run on the 360.
Yeah, looks like it has to run on x86 architecture, which the original xbox is but the 360 is not.
QuoteBut on the other hand I assume a chipped original xbox, which *does* support xbmc, would be quite cheap by now. But on the other hand the original xbox might not be much good for HD content. I'll have to think about it and try to find some more info...
Yeah, around here you can find a used original Xbox for $50 at Gamestop. I've been thinking about getting one to use as a media center extender in my kid's room & maybe try out xbmc.
The 360 is an excellent console, and it can stream practically anything-- only catch to that is you have to use it in conjunction with a PC on your network that can serve up (or act as a relay for) media.
Been looking around and it seems you can get an original xbox for peanuts here as well. Do you think it would be a problem to get it to play HD content?
Quote from: Pat on December 17, 2009, 09:27:09 AM
Been looking around and it seems you can get an original xbox for peanuts here as well. Do you think it would be a problem to get it to play HD content?
Just looking at the system specs of the original xbox, I think you'd almost have to be a magician to get it to reliably handle HD content. But I don't know much about xbmc so I can't say for sure.
If you want something cheap & small that can handle streaming HD content *and* play HD content from a USB drive, you might want to look for something like this: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Network-ready-Player-WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN/dp/B002KKFP9Y/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_2
I have the non-networked version (only plays from a USB drive-- no network capabilities) & it reliably plays literally everything I throw at it-- divx, xvid, mkv, mp4, mov, you name it. Only negative is that you have to manually load the content from a PC on to a USB storage device, and then plug the USB device into the player. But it's pretty smooth sailing after that. Simple, clean interface.
Just purchased a chipped original Xbox with an extra hard-drive for 450 sek (~$60). Pretty cheap so I might as well give it a try with XBMC and if it doesn't work out I can still play games on it. I have a HDMI exit on my laptop (as well as a blu ray player) so I can always stream the HD content from the laptop instead.
Thanks for all the advice!
Haven't had a whole lot of time to fool with the Zino HD, but it does seem to do a good job playing Hulu video in HD, using the latest Flash beta that uses hardware acceleration for video.
I've been a bit less successful getting my two USB HDTV tuners to work, however. One of them (which I thought had valid Win7 drivers) doesn't seem to work at all, and the other (which I know works with Win7) is only reliably tuning to standard def analog cable channels, and no clear QAM channels, save for the stupid public access ones.
Have not tried boxee at all, but I'll see if I can in the next week or so.
I also need to do some serious tweaking to the display output. I could put up with the fact that it's not matching my HDTV's native resolution, but the colors are way off. I have an odd feeling that if I just use VGA out, it would look a lot nicer, but I want to run everything through HDMI, dammit!