New Business idea: Pre-building mini HTPC clients

[IVB]

not sure if this is a *good* business idea, but the ludicrous price of extenders, plus my personal desire to avoid learning about the latest & bestest mini mobo's/etc got me to thinking: If someone out there did their homework and figured out what hardware combo would result in a tiny HTPC client HD200-ish size, that could render HD video plus have various a/v outputs, they could make some $$.

I stopped visiting the HTPC section of avsforum in Q2-2008 (aka >3 years ago) when the HD100 came out, and haven't looked back since. Well, until G-Day that is, and i'm only looking now to refamiliarize myself with the latest developments.

God knows I'd be willing to pay someone $100-$200 more than the cost of parts to go through the effort of building an HTPC client, figuring out how to make it quiet, determining which brands of what work together, dealing with the memtest, and all the other stuff that has me horrified. I just don't have the time for that anymore, but hopefully either GoogSage starts talking or someone decides to offer this before I need to do it. I'll bet I don't have to do anything until Nov-ish of this year, not too much sure how much longer after that I can keep to just 2 TVs in a house with 2 kids + 2 adults, none of whom watch the same shows. (taSageTV on iPod Touch has helped pacify the natives for now).

[guho]

No need as far as I am concerned. Mac Minis (starting with the late 2009 ones with 9400m video) running bootcamp/windows 7 and SageTVClient are perfect clients and play all imaginable formats smoothly. Older minis are not as good at producing perfectly smooth 1080p but still stylish.

If the client needs 3D or blu-ray, I think the Asrock Vision series fits the bill. I am actually considering upgrading from my late 2009 mini to the Asrock since the connected display got upgraded to the Sony 46hx909, which is 3d-capable. So I'd like to use NVidia 3dtv play on it. The asrock starts at $805 from superbiiz.

One thing I am not sure of is how quiet the Asrock Vision 137B is compared to a 2GHz Mac Mini Late 2009. If anyone knows how the noise levels compare please let me know. Since most of the time I watch 2D, I value quietness over 3D or bluray capability of the client.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by IVB

not sure if this is a *good* business idea, but the ludicrous price of extenders, plus my personal desire to avoid learning about the latest & bestest mini mobo's/etc got me to thinking: If someone out there did their homework and figured out what hardware combo would result in a tiny HTPC client HD200-ish size, that could render HD video plus have various a/v outputs, they could make some $$.

I stopped visiting the HTPC section of avsforum in Q2-2008 (aka >3 years ago) when the HD100 came out, and haven't looked back since. Well, until G-Day that is, and i'm only looking now to refamiliarize myself with the latest developments.

God knows I'd be willing to pay someone $100-$200 more than the cost of parts to go through the effort of building an HTPC client, figuring out how to make it quiet, determining which brands of what work together, dealing with the memtest, and all the other stuff that has me horrified. I just don't have the time for that anymore, but hopefully either GoogSage starts talking or someone decides to offer this before I need to do it. I'll bet I don't have to do anything until Nov-ish of this year, not too much sure how much longer after that I can keep to just 2 TVs in a house with 2 kids + 2 adults, none of whom watch the same shows. (taSageTV on iPod Touch has helped pacify the natives for now).

Only one drawback to this idea for a business. Without a way to purchase SageTV PC Client licenses that business would be very limited. Your only customer would be one who has extra PC client licenses lying around. Anything that supports 1080P playback should work fine for an extender-type PC. These come to mind:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176004

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176002

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176021

Giada seems to be the company that comes close to meeting your specs. I would consider the last one because it also includes a remote and is based on the latest AMD Fusion E350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 based video.

Gerry

[IVB]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Only one drawback to this idea for a business. Without a way to purchase SageTV PC Client licenses that business would be very limited. Your only customer would be one who has extra PC client licenses lying around.

oh darn, thats true, i forgot about that. bit.

Anything that supports 1080P playback should work fine for an extender-type PC. These come to mind:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176004

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176002

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856176021

Giada seems to be the company that comes close to meeting your specs. I would consider the last one because it also includes a remote and is based on the latest AMD Fusion E350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 based video.

Gerry

thanks for the links, those seem really cheap at $300ish, all i'd need is windows.

[panteragstk]

Not really relevant to the discussion, but did you see the comments for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16856176002?

Pros: At first I was concerned because the manual did not specify Delete key to enter the Bios settings. And I don't mean to sound paranoid or anything but I was for sure certain there is a company out there that makes chipsets and wifi chips. So I did not want to find out that the SouthBridge Chipset was being hacked wirelessly. If so then they can pretty much do what ever they want. Unless of course you get a anechoic chamber or a solid metal case like this one.

Cons: I wish they had an internal optical drive space because the same company that makes wifi chips also makes SATA controllers and interface for the optical drives.
I also wished they came with shorter hard-drive mounting screws and a dedicated wrench to install.

Other Thoughts: For the money this is a budget solution to get computing done and implement some resistance to wireless hacking.

Some people are just crazy.

[Evil_Attorney]

I guess I didn't realize how cheap some of these pre-built mini PCs were. $150-300 is reasonable for such a small form factor.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I guess I didn't realize how cheap some of these pre-built mini PCs were. $150-300 is reasonable for such a small form factor.

It really is. The only downside I can see is the lack of a dvd/blu-ray drive. Not all that necessary, but I found one for $89, and it is very slim so if the need for local disc playback ever came up there is a way.

$240 for a tiny all in one is a pretty good deal.

[jptheripper]

I have been obsessively spec'ing a hardware client. Unfortunately, its a price issue. With a windows 7 license, its running over $480 (assuming buy family pack at $125 so ~$40 each).

Case - antec isk-100 (tiny, 8x8x2 or so) (with DC power supply)
MB - ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion
Features - Onboard WIFI b/g/n, bluetooth, sata 3, usb 3, hdmi,6 channel audio, etc.. all in about 15watts
HDD - OCZ Agility 3 60gb SSD (sata3) 525 MB/s read 475 MB/s write
Memory - Gskill ripjaw 2x4gb ddr3 1333

SO that is $450+$40 for windows = $490 with no client license. Add a slim external bdrom for $90 and for $600 you have a bluray player with 8gb ram and a SSD that is very very capable.

decisions...

[Evil_Attorney]

I think the bigger downside, if comparing to the HD300, is that it runs window. It was difficult for me to keep things going perfectly, even with Win 7. Codecs would sometimes get messed up, updates would require reboots, sometimes waking up from sleep would mess up a program, I never got HD audio working on it. I have been spoiled by the HD300 always working flawlessly.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I have been obsessively spec'ing a hardware client. Unfortunately, its a price issue. With a windows 7 license, its running over $480 (assuming buy family pack at $125 so ~$40 each).

Case - antec isk-100 (tiny, 8x8x2 or so) (with DC power supply)
MB - ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion
Features - Onboard WIFI b/g/n, bluetooth, sata 3, usb 3, hdmi,6 channel audio, etc.. all in about 15watts
HDD - OCZ Agility 3 60gb SSD (sata3) 525 MB/s read 475 MB/s write
Memory - Gskill ripjaw 2x4gb ddr3 1333

SO that is $450+$40 for windows = $490 with no client license. Add a slim external bdrom for $90 and for $600 you have a bluray player with 8gb ram and a SSD that is very very capable.

decisions...

The SSD and 8gb of ram are overkill (nothing wrong with that). Downgrading the ram to 4gb and using a lower end SSD could save you around $100. I've got a dirt cheap kingston 30gb ssd and it is lightning fast opening sage and waking from sleep. The only reason to get one with that high of a data transfer rate would be for moving files around. The real world performance for an HTPC would be next to nothing over a lower end ssd.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

I think the bigger downside, if comparing to the HD300, is that it runs window. It was difficult for me to keep things going perfectly, even with Win 7. Codecs would sometimes get messed up, updates would require reboots, sometimes waking up from sleep would mess up a program, I never got HD audio working on it. I have been spoiled by the HD300 always working flawlessly.

I've never had an extender so I wouldn't know, but my client is rock stable. I haven't had issues with it in a very long time. If you configure the clients correctly you won't have issues, but it took me almost a year of trial and error to get to that point. Granted, I can do it in my sleep now so if anyone needs help let me know (once you guys actually buy your hardware that is).

I think I'm going to grab one of those $149.99 little mini pc's and see what I can get it to do.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

The SSD and 8gb of ram are overkill (nothing wrong with that). Downgrading the ram to 4gb and using a lower end SSD could save you around $100. I've got a dirt cheap kingston 30gb ssd and it is lightning fast opening sage and waking from sleep. The only reason to get one with that high of a data transfer rate would be for moving files around. The real world performance for an HTPC would be next to nothing over a lower end ssd.

The main reasons i choose 8gb and the sata3 ssd were for fanart and the every elusive netflix. Plus (due to the deidcated onboard video in the apu) i would allocate about 2gb to video right off the bat.

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I think I'm going to grab one of those $149.99 little mini pc's and see what I can get it to do.

If you do, let me know how well it works, especially for bluray rips.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

The main reasons i choose 8gb and the sata3 ssd were for fanart and the every elusive netflix. Plus (due to the deidcated onboard video in the apu) i would allocate about 2gb to video right off the bat.

That makes sense. I don't use the onboard video on my i3 due to the fact it can only use 512mb (I think). In my system the 4gb of memory works great. The ssd being sata3 wouldn't really benefit you fanart wise because the access time is more important than transfer rate. My ssd is very cheap, but the access time is less that 1ms. Fanart pops instantly. As for netflix, I don't know what an ssd would do for you there. What are you thinking?

[jptheripper]

The main thing was the memory. Basically that you could have netflix and sagetv running simultaneously and hotkey between the two.

as for the ssd, big faster = better, right?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

The main thing was the memory. Basically that you could have netflix and sagetv running simultaneously and hotkey between the two.

as for the ssd, big faster = better, right?

You'd think, but not really for HTPC use. Access time is the most important, and almost every ssd will have a very fast access time. Don't get me wrong, that is an awesome ssd, but you'd be wasting a bit of money. I'm getting one of the older corsair ssd's that is based of the sandforce 1200 chip (the one you are looking at is the newer 2200 chip) and it is very fast and the same capacity for $99.99. 60gb is perfect especially if you plan to run other programs other than sage, you just don't need the extra bandwidth. Having said all that, if you plan to play graphics heavy games (which I assume you are not) then the extra speed would be worth it.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

You'd think, but not really for HTPC use. Access time is the most important, and almost every ssd will have a very fast access time. Don't get me wrong, that is an awesome ssd, but you'd be wasting a bit of money. I'm getting one of the older corsair ssd's that is based of the sandforce 1200 chip (the one you are looking at is the newer 2200 chip) and it is very fast and the same capacity for $99.99. 60gb is perfect especially if you plan to run other programs other than sage, you just don't need the extra bandwidth. Having said all that, if you plan to play graphics heavy games (which I assume you are not) then the extra speed would be worth it.

well that one was 134-$20 rebate, so only $15 more

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

well that one was 134-$20 rebate, so only $15 more

Then I'd go with the faster drive. $15 isn't enough to worry about, you just won't notice the difference (probably).

[panteragstk]

These Zotac units look really nice. They have everything except an ssd. I could build an i3 for a bit more money, but it wouldn't look as nice or draw as little power. These are something else to look at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16856173013

EDIT: I fell dumb. I looked at the ION systems again and they have no memory or ssd. I'll have to add that to my pricing.

[Evil_Attorney]

Slightly off topic, but how difficult is it to get HD audio/bitstreaming working on one of these machines?