Smart Home Blog

Brando keeps making life of HTPC owners nicer and easier. Its new Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard is not bigger then ordinary remote control but provides QWERTY input, mouse touch-pad and navigation buttons. It has built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery which can be charged from PC USB port, and a lecture laser pointer in case if you need it.

The new Brando Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard probably the best portable keyboard for HTPC I have ever seen. The keyboard is supported by Linux, Windows and probably Mac OS X and it can be found on the Brando site at $92.00 or on the TomTop at $59.99 only.

[via Engadger]

Zotac announced its new nettop ZBOX HD-ID11 based on the nVidia Ion 2 graphic platform. The rest spec includes a dual-core 1.66GHz Atom D510 CPU, HDMI 1.3a, six USB ports, integrated 802.11n WiFi, dual-link DVI, and a 6-in-1 media card reader. The box supports Full HD and offers flawless Flash 10.1 playback as well, thanks to powerful 16 cores GeForce G210 GPU. And the price is very attractive – $209.99 only for the barebone version in US! Hope that European version won’t be much more expensive.

[via Engadget]

Not ordinary keyboard for HTPC was produced by Cideko. The Cideko Air Keyboard is a wireless compact QWERTY keyboard with additional media and navigation keys. Additionally the keyboard has built-in gyration mouse which makes control of HTPC more handy (see the demo video below). To have that possibility you should spend almost 90 bucks. But I think it’s worth that.

There is only one disadvantage. It lacks F1-F12 keys which are used in the media software. For example, F7 brings main menu in the LinuxMCE and F8 – lighting “rose”. But from another hand it’d be interesting to configure the Cideko Air Keyboard similar way as it’s done for Gyration mouse or FiireChief. In any case, that keyboard can be a good addition to your home theater based on PC.

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Recently GeeXboX announced its new software for HTPC called Enna. It offers a standard set of functions such playback video and audio, showing photos from local drives, USB storage or network shares. However, there is one unique feature in the Enna. It’s a BookStore allowed to read your favourite eBooks from different Internet content providers. Also the new GeeXboX media center software comes with VDPAU supports which is very important for HD video fans.

Enna development team has a huge todo list which includes adding games, integration with VDR to watch and record digital TV, supporting UPnP and DLNA. Long-term plans include online services integration (currently there is no one, even YouTube), Instant Messaging, VoIP Telephony and Video Conference and TelePresence. Souns very promising. But we’ll see the progress this summer.

To install Enna under Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) just add GeeXboX repository to your apt sources list and use apt to get it. Also note that Enna is a part of GeeXboX distribution. Users of other Linux distributions can install Enna from the sources.

Finally nVidia confirmed that the next generation of its popular platform Ion will be released in Q1 of 2010. That’s good news for all who’d like to have a compact and power HTPC. The nVidia Ion2 will be compatible with Intel’s new Pine Trail platform and it should be faster and more energy efficient. So, if you decided to buy Ion based motherboard or nettop it’d be better to wait a bit. Because the new Ion 2 will give you more options while price to the Ion 1 products should be reduced.