Some hardware fun..

19. August 2008 23:11

I just got my MSI Wind Barebones desktop unit a few days ago. I had been looking at some of the net-media players around, and honestly it seems like most of them have some sketchy reviews. When I saw this unit at Newegg, I had to order one. I'd been looking at Atom based Mini-ITX boards, and cases, and this barebones came in under what the board and case of similar style would have been. I didn't get a Mini PCIe wireless board for it, I wasn't aware it had such a slot until after I recieved the unit.

Well, I've loaded my trusty Ubuntu 8.04, and XBMC Media Center on the thing, and really like it a lot. I am able to play most of my videos without issue. Though most of my complaints would be centered around XBMC, given that the Linux port is fairly new, and actively worked on, I can give some slack. I am able to play most 720p video I have without issue on it. I'm using 720x400 for the screen resolution on my desktop monitor. I'll buy a VGA to RGB adapter cable in a few weeks.

For general business use, email, and web browsing it is absolutely the best value out there bar none. It's also quite small and sips power. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the prebuilt options coming from various vendors in the following months. I had an 80gb SATA drive, so all I needed was the ram (2GB G-Skill), and the DVD drive.. got a burner, because the SATA DVD readers weren't that far off in pricing. My total with shipping was under $225.

I did have to install a driver for the Realtek 8111C network adapter in Ubuntu Hardy though, I found a script that made this relatively painless though.

In the next couple weeks I may try out Windows XP and XBMC Windows, as well as an OSx86 Hackintosh install, just to see how well it works out. I'll probably stick with Linux, for the lower overhead in the long run, but will definitely have some fun with this thing. If you have any Media Center / Media Player applications you can recommend I try, let me know. I'm also interested in running some classic emulators on it as well Mame, NES, Sega, etc...

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Comments

4/14/2009 6:59:55 PM #

Tell us please, how were your further tests, it is very interesting for me.

Cleasing |

7/7/2009 12:18:40 PM #

Will this thing run Netfix under XP. I like to use the XBMC stuff to access my ReplayTV nextwork but that does not work under XP. Does it work under Ubuntu, perhaps I'll have to choose.

ziggygt |

7/7/2009 6:10:40 PM #

@ziggygt, If you mean Netflix (missing the L), probably. There is an XBMC port for windows, but boxee is probably a better option. I don't know what the status of Netflix interaction is on Boxee currently, the windows version is on hiatus. Netflix switched over to using Silverlight for its' streaming, from an even more proprietary (windows only) solution. Although MS provides codecs for Moonlight(Silverlight on Linux), it doesn't include the encryption that MS uses.

TVersity pro would allow you to stream netflix through to your upnp front end (many devices support this). I'm currently planning on switching my media playback to an LG BD390 Blu-Ray player that supports UPnP media with a NAS box that supports UPnP/DLNA media streaming on the backend. I'll probably use TVersity pro for access to web media in the living room...

The atom box really isn't quite there in terms of being able to do 1080p video, which is where I really want to be.

tracker1 |

7/8/2009 9:28:04 PM #

Tracker1,

I recently loaded Tversity. I do not quite see how to serve the Netflix stuff. Please tell me more? I was looking at XBMC because I thought I could use with my three ReplayTV boxes and my 2tb server. That stuff in XBMC is broken and not likely to be fixed. If I copy everything off the replaytv boxes to the DVarchive server I can see them on the upnp network so another client can work. I am pretty invested in SD-TV. There is a dual core atom. do you think that has a better chance? Would like to see something low power I have several dual cpu xeon's that make the the meter spin and I need ear plugs. Boxee looks neat. I will check it out.

Ziggygt |

7/11/2009 2:36:51 PM #

For any online streaming relay in tversity, you have to buy the pro version. The main limitation in hd playback on the atoms is mainly that the integrated intel graphics frankly suck. nvidia's ion platform showed some promise but intel has made the atom pricing tied to a bundling with their chipset. If you don't mind being limited to 720p playback, it can work... but if you are working through a upnp server, there are a few stand alone network media players that can work, so your upnp or tversity server can be in another room.

The only real advantages imho of an actual pc in the living room is that you can do emulation, and other non-boxed functionality. it's nice to be able to look at web sites from your living room... Honestly a lower power dual core athlon or core2 on an nvidia8000-9000 series, or amd780-790 based motherboard is a better option... If you go with a full size media case, you can put a big/quiet fan on the cpu. I had an amd 4850e on a 780G amd chipset board with a huge cpu fan that ran pretty quiet that was way faster, and not too much more pricey than my wind desktop was. The wind is a great low power desktop option, but the chipset really keeps it from being a good htpc option.

tracker1 |

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