Smart Home Blog

Apple refreshed its Mac Mini. It’s available in two basic configurations, the first of which includes a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive for $599, while $200 more will buy you a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, the same 1GB of RAM, and a 120GB hard drive. Both units come with Front Row and an Apple Remote, iLife ‘08, OS X 10.4, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, and the same cute box which I like.

Unfortunately, it’s still impossible to boot Plutohome Media Director on Mac Mini via PXE. Hope LinuxMCE will fill that gap. It’d be great to use such perfect inside and outside device as a part of Linux-based smarthome system.

[via Engadget]

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Sony launched VAIO TP1. That Living Room PC is stylish and features 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 300GB 7,200RPM SATA hard drive, dual-layer DVD writer, ATSC / NTSC TV tuner, GMA 950 integrated graphics set, and HDMI / DVI / VGA outputs, a 4-pin FireWire connector, audio in / out, four USB 2.0 ports, Memory Stick / SD slots, 802.11b/g. You can own all of this together with Vista Home Premium for $1599.99. IMHO I’d exclude Vista and would try Linux with MythTV

[via Engadget]

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Shuttle Inc. announced its new product - Shuttle XPC Barebone SG33G5M. It’s a small form factor PC with stylish design and impressive functionality. The SG33G5M supports processors of Intel’s Core™ 2 Quad, Core™ 2 Duo E6000/E4000 series, Pentium Dual-Core E2000 series and Celeron 400 series and can accomodate up to 4GB of DDR2-800 memory in dual-channel mode. It can play HD video (thanks to GMA 3100 onboard graphics engine and HDMI output) and allows playback of copy protected HD content through HDCP. The sound should be hight quality with built-in 7.1 HD audio chip with Dolby Digital Live! and DTS Connect certification. The integrated Gigabit-LAN connector is well-suited for data streaming in the local network or fast downloads from the internet. The remote control for Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate and the integrated VFD display complete the HTPC view.

The Shuttle Barebone originally produced for Windows but you can install Linux based media center as well (MythTV for example). The remote control sensor is compatible with lirc_mceusb2 and the Linux driver for VFD display is also available. You might be interesting to see the Python script to communicate with VFD display because MythTV doesn’t support it directly.

The Shuttle XPC Barebone SG33G5M will be available shortly with recommended retail price is €328.00.

Personally, I prefer Mac Mini form factor or something similar to Silverstone LC16M. The Shuttle looks a bit heavy for me. But its VFD display is really cool! I like it.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

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MiniPC from aOpen looks very good to be used as a client for home entertainment system. It’s small, power and stylish. Personally, I like it a bit less than Mac Mini but for my purposes aOpen MiniPC is ideal except one thing - it’s graphic card. The point is that I’d like to use it as media director (media client) of Plutohome home automation system. But since Pluthome is based on Linux it doesn’t provide drivers for the latest graphic chipsets. As result, MP945-VDR doesn’t display UI2 Alpha Blended and doesn’t play HD video.

Anyway, the new model MP965-D is based on the Intel Santa Rosa chipset and sports Core 2 Duo with 800MHz FSB, SATA HDD, S-VIDEO, DVI and PCI slot Express. As I see aOpen MiniPC has two USB ports on the front. It makes it ugly IMHO. The previous version with power button only looked much more stylish.

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AOpen miniPC is perfect to be used as media PC for home entertainment. It’s stylish, quiet and power enough to replace satellite receiver and DVD player in your living room.
We tested aOpen MP915-X as Plutohome media director. It’s based on Intel Pentium M processor and it’s good for ordinary TV. When we tried to play HD TV it produced some delays and the video decoding took 100% of processor.
Recently aOpen announced MP945-VDR - HD and Vista ready miniPC. It features Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel 945GM OnDie video adapter, Built-in IR receiver, DVI / YPbPr / S-Video / HDMI interface, 5.1 Channel. Additionally it can include TV Tuner, Wireless 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth Module.
MP945-VDR seems cool and we’re going to test it with HD TV and Plutohome. I’m not sure about positive result but we should try.

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