Wow. Now all we need is a Plasma/LCD in the 50” range that is just as good a TV as it is a monitor. It is so hard to find a flat panel that does both really well.
Man that is some power house!!! HDMI, DVI tons of accessories, it would look so cool in the living room! And it is available for shipment!
Crazy…..... So any takers? :wink:
WOw! Even though I’m a huge fan of “rolling your own” HTPCs, this one is actually impressive for the money. Consider that Shuttle’s latest entry into the HTPC market costs $1899 (actually $1999) and it’s probably nowhere as elegant as this one has and all of a sudden $2299 doesn’t sound all that bad.
I said it in the other thread, but I might as well repeat it in this one since it’s more on-topic…the 200 DVD holder sort of kills it for me as I already have over 550+ DVDs.
[quote author=“tifosiv122”]I said it in the other thread, but I might as well repeat it in this one since it’s more on-topic…the 200 DVD holder sort of kills it for me as I already have over 550+ DVDs.
Erik
That’s ok…buy 3 of these and you’ll have room for 50- DVDs!
Actually, I wonder how it connects…maybe Firewire…if so, you could conceivably daisy chain them.
Of course, all you need to do them is just buy more HDDs and rip those DVDs you have onto more HDDs or to a central server.
Yep, this looks sweet…after years of debating HP, Aleinware, Shuttle, Nivea, and Hush…and Sony’s offerings…this is a nice combination…there are some plug-ins to Media Center 2005 to house your DVDs on the HD and mount the ISO you rip on-the-fly ... but this is kinda a different approach, and nice, cuz you don’t have to go thru the ripping process and you get all of the possible interfaces to connect to the TV instead of having to go thru DVI…HDMI is nice…
Anyway…having all that accessible in a HTPC looking case, w/ the 200 disk capacity, and interfaced w/ Media Center…WOW…nice…
Only thing I don’t like about it…GIGA…might have to yank that out in favor of NVTV or Hauppauge…but that should be a problem as long as the hardware will match up to the ports on the back…which can be a big IF w/ Sony hardware sometimes…
Will be giving this some consideration before I spend the $ to complete my Dell 400SC HTPC server I’m working on…
Yep, got a similar deal, think I paid a bit more than that…but I got 2 of them at the time, one as a development box/server for my SQL Server, Oracle, .NET work…the other for a ‘future’ HTPC box, which is still in the works and collecting dust…hehehe…just haven’t had time…
[quote author=“hylton”]Yep, got a similar deal, think I paid a bit more than that…but I got 2 of them at the time, one as a development box/server for my SQL Server, Oracle, .NET work…the other for a ‘future’ HTPC box, which is still in the works and collecting dust…hehehe…just haven’t had time…
Chris
I used it as a server for my DB until about 2 months ago when I replaced it with something faster. It was nice having Gigabit Ethernet for free though.
As much as I am tempted to get this set up, I am gonna wait for 2nd or 3rd (if it makes it) generation with more HD, Blu-Ray, one or more ATSC tuners and better graphics. After looking and comparing it with the Japanese rig, the US version is stripped down from some cool features, though the JP version does not have the 200 disc changer.
I am sure it is a test marketing model and I really wish they included VAIO Zone, I really care less for Media Center OS. At least LifeFlow application made it to the US model…..very nice GUI with some neat features.
Yes, Blu-Ray is one of the few reasons I would consider waiting, or building cheap for now and see what falls out next year…but agreed, would like to wait on that as well
...but the other features I’m not as concerned about…never have or will really record live TV…so other than watching TV and serving out to ORB for my cell phone and laptop while on the road, tuners don’t do me any good…
I want the HTPC integration w/ my personal media content (video, audio, etc.)...and DVD movies…so pretty much any HTPC serves that purpose…plus, until MS and the sat companies start playing nice…HDTV tuners are still just gonna be OTA and you’ll be relying on an external tuner or sat box to control your HDTV content… I guess that’s coming, but i’ll just be an OS upgrade and a second tuner card added to your TV.
On the GIGA issue I posted, wasn’t really even thinking, but if this thing has any expansion on the back, and since MCE supports multiple tuners…could just pop an Nvidia NVTV unit into another slot and have the capability pros/cons of both available in MCE…
Anyway…should be neat to hear from some people that get this to see their impression…
great link, good shot of the back on the last slide…looks like the giga card could just come right out and something else popped into it, but would be nice to see the entire back panel and maybe the inside of the unit…
the placement of the component video is in a pretty strange location, curious why it seems to be either part of a sound card, or integraded…but either way, that entire section below the giga card is pretty proprietary looking…
