All Video is heading to IP: the case for a really low cost fanless mATX HTPC
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We're always looking into ways to lower the cost and power consumption of personal computers, and so increase access to computers. Intel's Atom technology is our preferred route - offering "good enough" performance for office tasks and web browsing. I personally use an Atom D525-based T2 Pro for my office PC and, especially, with an Intel SSD, performance is more than adequate.
But the web is changing in a way that challenges the nettop spec. Everything is heading online and people increasingly want to watch HD films on youtube and locally and this requires either a fast processor or a decent GPU and software that can utilize the GPU.
XBMC can do this for local files and Flash 10.1 can do it in Windows for HD online content. (Flash 10.1 on Linux is still a joke.)
So the challenge for us is a PC with a low cost processor and a good GPU. Ion would seem to be the answer but it produces so much heat and even Ion 2 misses a lot of features. And Ion 2 is still expensive (£100+ for the board).
We like our PCs to be small but the reality is micro ATX boards are much better value. This Asrock PV530 motherboard costs just above £35/$50 and has a 1.8GHz VIA processor and a PCI Express 16 slot. I am sure we could make it fanless and then add a fanless Ati 5450 Video Card that consumes just 13W of power. Anandtech has extensively reviewed this - Sandy Bridge technology aside it's practically the perfect HTPC card.
The challenge is how to allign the card horizontally and how to make a a long case that's not too tall so you can fit everything inside an HTPC case that looks like a DVD player.
LG BD370 BluRay Player Review (a £130 fanless PC with BluRay)
I've already blogged about how much I like the LG M227WD TV and though I use an Aleutia H1 for my HTPC setup, I wanted to compare it to the set-top experience. After all, a lot more people are going to buy cheap, standalone devices for BluRay, rather than home theatre PCs or Sony PS3s, just as hundreds of millions of more DVD players were sold than PCs with DVDs or Sony PS2s.
I bought the second cheapest I could fine (like choosing wine at a restaurant!), the BD370 on eBuyer (£130 ex VAT with shipping).
It's got a wondeful finish, HDMI output (along with component), very quick boottime and it plays BluRay flawlessly. If it was a PC, I'd stand in awe of its low cost perfection. It even has a 10/100 network port as well as USB 2.0 (to let you play DivX movies)
But actually, if you had a narrow, though reasonable, definition of a PC as "something that can get you on YouTube and let you play downloaded films", then you'd only need this.
There's built-in software that connects you to YouTube (navigated by an onscreen keyboard controlled by the remote). Of course you can't participate but it's a great add-on, directly at the expense of the HTPC market.
This is a major trend - electronics are becoming intelligent. If a Linksys router can run Linux (OpenWRT) and serve as a 5W fanless PC, then what's to stop a very tiny (and distorted) distribution offering a terminal, an office suite, and a web browser? Plug in a USB keyboard and you would have a fanless, smart looking PC with integrated BluRay for just £130.
LG has economies of scale that even Dell would struggle to match, let alone Aleutia.
eBay already sells LCD TVs with built-in DVD players, and a USB key for playing Divx files. And some of these even let you play NES games off your pen drive, since the TV has a built-in emulator.
If you can emulate Nintendo games or build in YouTube, why not a whole range of apps that collectively offer a PC experience?
Aleutia H1: A Tiny, Fanless, VESA-Mount HTPC with Nvidia Ion and 1080p Playback
I'm fascinated by the hotel industry and the Aleutia Labs have long focussed on designing a PC able to stream HD content (720p) into the rooms of the world's luxury hotels. The challenge is that no one paying $600/night wants to be kept awake by the drone of a PC humming along and so any HTPC must be completely silent. It also has to have either an HDMI or a DVI port and ideally SP/DIF optical audio support. It has to be small (ideally VESA-mountable), low power (since it will be on all the time), and it must be competively priced. The silent B1 was initially designed for this purpose and its dual core CPU and onboard ATi 3200 ensured that it could play 1080p with ease (less than 50% CPU utilization). But it overshot the needs and was just a little too big.
The Fanless H1 (H for Hotel) is our next revision and is purpose-built for the in-room entertainment industry. It fits in the hands, has no moving parts, and thanks to the onboard Nvidia GPU (and 1.6GHz Atom 230 CPU) it can smoothly play 720p and 1080p content. 2GB of 667MHz RAM (the FSB is 533MHz), Gigabit Lan, HDMI and DVI port, as well as Optical Audio Out.
Power is supplied via an external brick with power consumption of just 30W.
Runs Ubuntu Linux, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (formerly XPe). For Linux and WES users, we're offering it with 8GB of flash storage, ideal for media streaming.
HTPC (whether Windows or Myth TV or Boxee) users have the option of a 2.5" Drive up to 500GB. Priced from £199/$300.