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MSI's Home Theatre PC Reviewed
VL writes "MSI, long time motherboard and video card manufacturer, has upped the ante somewhat with their MSI Entertainment and Gaming (MEGA 651) PC. Like other popular SFFs, the MEGA 651 is still "cube" in appearance, and offers support for fast CPUs and an AGP slot, but it has some unique ideas that target those specifically looking into building a Home Theater PC (HTPC).
"
M.S.I. already announced this Product during the CeBit in March...
See their Press Release
Get it barebones for $279 at Zeus PC...
Take a look at a site with some better specs. As you can see, its got the "designed for MS Windows" logo. Plus all the standard interfaces. The LCD screen is probably linked directly to the hardware CD player, so most likely isn't even exposed to software.
Our local PC shop has had these in stock for a while. Pretty cool for a entertainment box, though probably not worth the cost.
I.O.U One Sig.
For Windows, check out myHTPC... I've been playing with that for some time. Its got a good community, getting ready for a second generation, and works well with my older ATI all-in wonder! Quite a fun thing to do, and my wife appreciates the outcome!
You may already have known this and just used this as an opportunity to crack an RMS joke, but for those that don't - RMS is one of several ways that the maximum output of a piece of stereo equipment is rated. In general RMS is the rating you want to look for - basically think of it as how loud you can crank them before the signal starts to distort.
:)
It's especially important to watch for this with computer speakers as manufacturers have a tendency to rate these units with PMPO which makes the units sound far more impressive than they actually are. "1000W" desktop speakers for $6.99 anyone?
All my stereo components have a matte black or champagne finish. Not only that but they all mount in a 19" rack, especially the HTPC.
I like the shoebox formfactor but if MSI is serious about it as a home theater component, they could at least go with a similar color scheme. Or maybe just less orange.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
It's just a box
You chose the OS that you put on the system when you have chosen your CPU, hard disk, CD/DVD drive, memory etc.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
ATI's upper-end All-in-Wonder cards have a component/HDTV add-on you can purchase for like $30. AFAIK, there is no other video card that supports component output. Maybe one of the high-end cards from Hauppauge?
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
see Tom's Hardware Guide for a really good review of this HTPC and three others.
basically think of it as how loud you can crank them before the signal starts to distort
Actually RMS = Root Mean Square. Usually one would see time variant voltages and currents given in RMS values or amplitude value. The RMS value is the DC value that would yeild the same powerdissipation in an ohmic load as the time variant signal does. For pure harmonic signals the RMS value is A/sqrt(2) where A is the amplitude value. RMS has noting to do with distortion, but simply denotes the power that would be dissipated in a pure ohmic load.
The speaker and amp manufacturers are very creative when it comes to power values, and you should be more critical that just looking for the three letters RMS.
Scitne aliquis remedium potimum crapulae?
First, the shape of the unit is terrible for a HTPC.. it would barely fit in most HT racks. A HTPC should conform to the fat and wide standard that every other home entertainment device has for ages. Yes Virginia, there is a reason they all look generally the same!
Second, it only has a 200W power supply!!!!! Umm.. my AIW 9700 Pro just about eats up all of that. That is VERY lacking when it comes to power supplies these days.
Third, What the hell is this statement about?
"Due to proprietary mechanical design, MSI only guarantees the compatibility of the MEGA PC with MSI's own Optical Storage Devices:
DVD-ROM: MSI 16x DVD-ROM (MS-8216)
CD-RW: MSI 52x24x52 CD-RW (MS-CR52-A2)"
Some how CD drives and DVD-ROM(not an optical storage device, it's an optical read device) can't be trusted to work since the shape of the system is different? Uhhh... that's a load of crap.
Fourth, It's a bit unclear if the annoyingly bright screen will be on when playing a DVD. The author of the article seems to think that HTPC users want an obnoxious screen dancing and doing other crap? Uhhhh... no.
In summary, this guy and MSI both seem to be missing the point. I quote, "If you're gaming...." Also, he doesn't ever actually integrate the unit into a HT setup, nor does he actually playback a DVD (according to article).
This box seems better suited to be a fancy media player and not a HTPC. Anyone can take a look over at avsforum and realize that the HTPC should be silent and inconspicous.
FYI, my HTPC is also my working PC(which isn't my desire); however, it's in a different room. My HT has zero exposed units... all you see is the TV and the speakers. Now if I had all my units near my TV, I wouldn't pick this unit as an HTPC.
(I can't get to this article, it's been /.ed, so I don't know how much of this is a repeat.) My friend and I ordered one just before it came out about 2.5 months ago and we got it after a few weeks of delays. The orange version is the Intel, and an AMD version is slated to come out (I'm pretty sure it will be green). The fan goes out the side, not the back like an XPC, but other than that it's a normal computer and can use any CD/DVD drive. The cords are cut to exactly the right lengths which makes assembling less than fun, for example, you need to mount the hard drive upside down.
The proprietary drives that they mention is so that you can play radio/audio CD/MP3 CD when the power to the computer part is off - the small amount of power that is drawn while the computer is plugged in is kept in a small area and used for the optical drives at low speeds, the LCD display in the front, and the audio. Those MSI drives that they recommend just use very little power (and give them more $$$).
We had it set up to act like a Windows Tivo (ATI AiW)/jukebox/internet console with a wireless network and monitor output (display 1) and directly to a tv (display 2) which worked really well (especially with ZoomPlayer), and we're going to try to put Linux on it next week or so along with MythTV. (The manual says that future versions will come with MSI's own media player/tv recorder software.)
It's pretty quiet and sitting in an air conditioned room - and thus hasn't overheated yet, but a review we saw before mentioned that cooling was definitely an issue. The PCI cards go directly in front of the cpu fan (brilliant) but if you get half-height cards it probably wouldn't be an issue at all.
The best part is that it looks much more like a home theater component than the XPC, but I think it was about US$50 more than a top Shuttle.
Ah, I'm just a dumb guitarist. With guitar amps, I've always heard it refered to as the maximum load before signal distortion begins to occur. The two might be related, or I might just have been mislead. =)
There will always be some distortion. The value to look for is THD which states the total harmonic distortion i percent (at some power value). When a system isn't perfectly linear (which no physical system is) in responce it will add unwantet harmonic components. THD is the power of the unwantetd components to the power of the signal.
If the RMS power value is combined with some value for THD at that power which is below say 1-2% you are right, because distortion below 2% is hard to hear.
There might be some standard way to specify RMS values which implies some THD value, but i wouldt trust that blindly.
Scitne aliquis remedium potimum crapulae?
you may want to look at someline along the lines of this. although its a bit pricey for my liking...
Lets face it, without tv out, dvi and/or component out this is simply another un-cube pc.
My extensive experiences with these are that they're loud, hot, and hard to work in. My last experiment with a shuttle based unit was horrible. It ran way too hot and the noise overwhelmed the low sound passages on movies. I removed the cover from the power supply for circulation and pulled the power supply fan that was screaming. No dice, the power supply died a month later. Proprietary replacement supply was over $50.
What I ended up going with was a nice slim but standard height tower, filled it with goodies, and hid it behind the couch. Wish I could have found a decent black desktop case but while there are a few around, they come with loud power supplies and tend towards expensive. I could net a nice tower case with a quality quiet power supply for small bucks by comparison.
I was able to use nice quiet 80mm fans, have plenty of air space inside the box, and its easy to work on. An external firewire DVD drive made accessibility easy, and a wireless keyboard/mouse that I can put in the closet when i'm not using them rounded out the package. An ATI remote wonder allows me full control of the machine without the keyboard when watching movies.
On the topic of intel vs amd for this application, a 2.0GHz celeron based on the northwood core is the choice. Its plenty cheap and more than speedy enough. I'm running blur/sharpen filters, resize doubling and extensive postprocessing with bsplayer and ffdshow-alpha. No CPU overload problems with mpeg 1/2/4. If needed for a specific app I can OC it to a 2.4GHz unit with no problems. Been using an Albatron motherboard for this. MB and cpu for under $140 and rock solid. Runs a hell of a lot cooler than the AMD parts I played with in the same price range and the cpu cooler options for quiet cooling are more extensive.
The little box is no good.
I work for a company that has just started to carry these PC's. Not to mince words, they are crap. As the artile mentions, you cannot use the LCD while the PC part is powered on. If your Radio portion is on when you power on the computer, your cd rom will not work in the OS. Want to listen to the radio? Good luck. First of all you cannot manually tune the radio stations, only scan the channels - which is a problem considering the most powerful Radio station here in Raleigh comes in FULL of static, half the time it scans right by all but the most powerfull stations (which are staticy at best). This is with the included antenna AND a large antenna we have on the roof (although there was less static with the rooftop antenna). If you want to play an MP3 cd with the HiFi part of the system on you have to hold down the cd flap and manually hit the open and close button of the cdrom (which is a problem for those with bigger fingers). The computer part isnt so bad.. but if I wanted a SFF PC, I would buy a Shuttle XPC.
.02 from a Salesperson. My company will not be ordering any more of these and sticking with the Shuttle's. (Did this reviewer get paid for his review?) This system needs a re-design for a rev. 2.0.
The PC part does have an AGP slot, which would be a good thing, execept for the fact that a full size video card (read: any GeForce/ATI) ARCS! to the power supply because it is so close and SHORTS OUT!
Just my