Boxee has long been the darling of the homebrew DVR crowd, turning the Apple TV into a far more capable – and less iTunes-centric – media system and brightening DIY HTPCs no end. Now the company has announced its plans for an off-the-shelf Boxee Box, which will deliver the same sort of experience but without the need to build it youself.
I have talked about the cool Envive TheaterStation multi-zone content management system before. The system debuted at CEDIA back in September.
One of the big problems I have had with the HTPC computers that I have tried and tested over the years is that there is not typically a good way to control all of the media from across the room. You can use a keyboard and mouse, but in cramped spaces that can be challenging, especially for the mouse. Glide TV has a new HTPC media controller that is way cool called the GlideTV Navigator.
NES console mods are cool, HTPCs are pretty cool, and nettops with NVIDIA Ion graphics are darned cool too, so when you put all three elements together you’ve got a recipe for something with a whole lot of cool potential. Modder drumboog has been video documenting his work transforming a NES into an Atom 330 based Blu-ray HTPC with GeForce 9400M graphics, and while it’s not quite complete yet, it’s certainly 99-percent awesome.
Video after the cut
ASUS have stepped up their nettop game with the arrival of the ASUS EeeBox EB1501. The first of the company’s range to include an integrated optical drive, the EB1501 also includes Intel’s Atom 330 dual-core CPU and NVIDIA’s 1080p-capable Ion graphics chipset, turning the neatly-balanced nettop into a pretty impressive media center PC.
When I first was briefed on the Media Center edition of XP by Microsoft, I thought MCE was a pretty bad idea. A lot of my skepticism had to do with the market they claimed they were going after, namely college students in dorm rooms and yuppies living in cramped apartments with no room for both TVs and PCs. Of course, college students mostly buy laptops, and no matter where you live most folks don’t watch TV on a small computer monitor from across the room. The short-term market were enthusiasts who understood the value of a DVR such as a TiVo.
Over time, Microsoft tried a few approaches with MCE – from extenders to allow you to view content on other TVs in the home over your network, to creating extender technology for Xbox (which is already hooked up to a TV set) – as well as working with a host of OEMs to create “living room” form factor home theater PCs. The result of these efforts was less than a stellar success and few vendors actively build home theater PCs; these days, if a consumer uses media center they’re either an enthusiast or they’ve tripped over it by mistake trying to do something else. That’s a shame, as MCE has evolved over time to become a great technology, one that few people even know exist.
One of the biggest problems with putting a computer in the living room for some users is finding a way to store and use the mouse and keyboard needed for navigation. Gyration has announced a new product today called the Air Mouse Elite that doesn’t need a desk or surface to work.
We’ve featured some impressive case-mods on these pages before now, but I think this has to be one of my favorites. The handiwork of Gup from techPowerUp!, the Stargate-themed pyramid HTPC has a motorized top-section that lifts to reveal an LCD with custom graphics.
Video demo after the cut
Where netbooks go, their deskbound nettop brethren eventually follow, and as NVIDIA’s Ion GPU has made its impact on the graphics capabilities of budget ultraportables, so it has its sights set on compact desktops too. ASRock and NVIDIA worked together on the ION 330-BD, a Blu-ray toting nettop that pairs Intel’s Atom processor with NVIDIA’s ION platform, and sent one over to prove to SlashGear that just because the footprint is small, it doesn’t mean the performance is too.
Technophiles that like their digital media know setting up a media PC can be difficult and can take up lots of space. Typically, with your media PC you will need the PC itself and an external amp of some kind to get good sound quality.
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