Smart Home Blog

Everex offers a compact and fanless PC which can be used as LinuxMCE media director - gPC mini. For $499 we can get 1.86GHz Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Mobile Processor T2130 (1MB L2 Cache, 1.86GHz, 533MHz), 120GB Hard Disk Drive, 512MB DDR2 667 SDRAM, DVD+/-RW, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator GMA950, Realtek ALC268 High-Definition Audio, (1) 10/100/1000 Ethernet Port, (1) DVI-I Port, (1) S-Video Port, (1) IEEE 1394 Port, (4) USB 2.0 Ports, (1) 4-in1 Media Card Reader, (1) Headphone/Line-Out Port, (2) Microphone/Line-In Port.

The gPC mini looks nice. So, it won’t break interior of your living room. Moreover because it’s thin it can be mounted behind TV easily. The price is also reasonable in my opinion.

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After budget and compact notebook ASUS Eee became very popular ASUS decided to start a new line of compact devices - EEE. It will include desktop versions as well. The first specimen was announced on CeBit - EP20. It’ll have a 1.87GHz Intel dual core processor, a 2.5 inch hard drive instead of flash memory and possible Intel graphic. The prospective price is around 200EUR.

The EP20 seems very attractive to be used as a media client for multi-room video systems such LinuxMCE, for example. It’s compact, stylish and fanless, can be mounted behind TV and its price should be reasonable. So, I think to buy it and test as LinuxMCE media director when ASUS starts to sell it in Europe.

[via Eee Site]

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I already blogged about Fiire products: FiireEngine, FiireStation and FiireChief. They should be 100% compatible with LinuxMCE. So, when I came to the point to buy VESA mount media director I started to think about 1″ FiireStation. According to its specification the device supports alpha blended UI2. But practically that’s not 100% true. It supports UI2 with Overlay. But it isn’t the biggest problem. Because it uses VIA Chrome graphical chip the 1″ FiireStation comes with custom image based on Kubuntu 6.10 without KDE and possibility to run MythTV locally. So, if you’re gonna spend about $900 you can do it just buying 1″ FiireStation.

Joyless news is that. The VIA based PC is the only one variant to have a VESA mounted media director. But basically it’ll support only UI1 which is too pure and old looking for the modern on-screen menu.

After discussion with one of LinuxMCE developers I decided to try MM200. It’s based on aOpen motherboard, has Intel graphical chip, supported UI2 with Overlay and supports HDTV (at least 720p). Also it’s slim enough to be mounted behind TV (just need to make custom fasteners) and its price is reasonable.

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Today I setup a new media director (MD) for our smarthome project. Its specs is here:

• Case: SilverStone LC16M
• Motherboard: Asus M2N Deluxe
• Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+
• Memory: 2Gb
• Video: Asus GeForce 6200 LE

I was afraid a bit about installation because Plutohome core has Single Core processor and ordinary kernel. But the media director is based on Core Duo and it needs SMP kernel (once we had some troubles with it - MD couldn’t get appropriate kernel from the Plutohome Core). But the installation passed fine. The media director got appropriate kernel without any problems.

The video card doesn’t have HDMI output. So, I used adapter DVI-to-HDMI to connect it to the Panasonic plasma. I couldn’t set screen resolution 1080p. It seems that something wrong with it. With 1080i the picture was broken. Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything in the logs. So, I stuck to 720p.

Tomorrow I’ll continue setup of the media director. I need to connect it to the receiver Marantz SR5600 (sound and control via RS232), patch and configure remote control iMON PAD, configure MythTV. So, it’s the to do list is not so big but it’ll take some time.

Update: Finally I found that TV doesn’t support 1080p (according to owner worlds). So, this is correct that only 720p was set.

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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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