Last week's announcement of Dell's Zino HD was exciting, adding another choice to an expanding market of powerful but small computers capable of running full screen HD (in the right configuration). The four front runners seem to be Dell's new Zino, Acer's AspireRevo, the Mac Mini and the AsRock Desktop Ion. Which would you choose? Survey after the jump.
For Hulu Streaming, Boxee, it's hard to beat a simple HTPC connected to your main TV. Here are some of the choices:
The Dell Zino HD is the newest of the bunch, and starts with the lowest price tag of $229, though probably incapable of large screen HD video.
The Acer AspireRevo is a slick looking HTPC based on the same Nvidia Ion chip set as the Dell Zino and costs between $350 to $450. The Dell has more configuration options.
The lesser known AsRock also packs a NVIDIA's Ion graphics technology and starts at $350.00 (available at Newegg). It's design is less refined, but it packs the same features as the other bunch, including a remote control option which the Zino currently lacks.
And finally the Mac Mini, which begins at a steep $599, packs desktop class graphics, a larger hard drive and built in wireless. Unfortunately, still no option for Blu-ray.
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Got our MacMini on Ebay for less than most of the other options. Streaming works great!
you can get a toned down AspireRevo for $199 and still have it as an HTPC
"The Dell Zino HD is the newest of the bunch, and starts with the lowest price tag of $229, though probably incapable of large screen HD video."
Out of curiosity, on what do you base that? The base processor alone is a cool 1.8GHz with 512K L2 cache. Not the fastest horse in the race, but quite capable. With another few bucks you can throw in a dual core with 1MB L2 cache, although how much that would help in decode is debatable. Spend a few bucks to upgrade the video card and with the right drivers you might be able to offload some of the decode work.
I'm strongly considering one of these babies (at that price it's hard not to), so it would be good to know if this is just wet-finger-in-the-air, or if someone has actual evidence that it doesn't have the horsepower to decode most formats in at least 720p.
The Dell Zino isn't an ION machine, unlike the Acer and AsRock boxes. In fact, it's kind of an anti-ION -- Athlon processor and ATI graphics!
I'm looking at the AsRock. I like the low power consumption possiblities of the Atom processor, and I'm a Linux geek, so the Nvidia chipset is a must. However, for any kind of HD Flash video, I really need to wait for Flash 10.1 to come out -- it will include hardware acceleration to take the load off the processor.
i would highly recommend Plex on the mac mini, or an mac for that matter. its a great media center. more functional than frontrow. lots of streaming plugins, netflix, hulu, etc. plus its free. similar to boxxee, but a much cleaner interface. you can also program your universal remote to operate it.
@nelsorp.. Might have to look into that! Thanks!
I think a decently configured Dell Zino HD with Windows 7 Media Center (Netflix Hulu integration) will make for a complete HTPC
Im going to agree with nelsorp. Plex with a mac mini has been great for me. Pluggeed into my reciever it gives stero sound and HD video. Throw in an elgato by Eye TV and you have a great HTPC. Ive been running this system for almost a year and it has worked without a hitch for the most part and lowered my cable bill.
To people considering Plex on OS X - Plex is a fork of XBMC. You can get similar functionality from XBMC on a vanilla non-Apple box and save yourself a nice chunk of money. http://www.xbmc.org .
Hmmm....going to dell's site and building a respectable zino box ends up costing closer to $500. However, NewEgg's deal on the ASRock has me seriously considering it. Looks like it'll do everything I need and cost less.
This is exactly the kind of post I love seeing on this site. It's not a picture of an iphone in a cassette case, it's a useful informative review, and from the looks of it it's just saved me a bundle of money by turning me on to a HTPC I didn't know about. Thanks!
WM7 Media Center with Hulu integration would rock. Any company willing to enable rich PC to TV connections around free content gets my vote.
I love my XBox360 and Netflix, but I don't want to pay $2.00 for watching TV shows I could watch on Hulu on my iMac in the other room for free.
I love my iMac but I can't stream legally purchased video content from iTunes to my XBox due to Apple's outrageous video DRM model.
The insidious nature of iPods/iPhones and iTunes is that they push you more and more into an Apple only ecosystem that then becomes incredibly painful to leave (people won't abandon their paid for content). The same is true of the XBox360/Zune model.
At least with Media Center and WM7 you can watch the content free of charge and then if you *want* to buy it through other channels you can.
Aspire revo Ubuntu XBMC