Ahanix D5 Media Center Enclosure

VL writes "Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC. The versatility of using MicroATX or Standard ATX motherboards, the look and feel of high end audio/video equipment and a VFD information center that gives the added information of what is playing. It comes at a hefty price tag mind you, but in this particular situation, you get what you pay for." Now that's what I'm talking about. Anybody know of any other commercially available cases as well suited to putting in a stereo system?

Comments

Price?

[swordboy]

Ahanix has delivered an enclosure that gives you everything you would desire in an HTPC.

Everything but PRICE!

That's hot

[invisik]

I hadn't considered assembling a HTPC before mainly due to cases (or lack of AV looking cases) and the fact that I have a ReplayTV. This case looks almost identical to my Denon receiver and Denon DVD players! Kudos to them, I may get one just to put my ReplayTV in! :)

-m

Re:My problem

[weirdal]

On their homepage they say that "Dvine 6 supports Micro ATX motherboard, three 3.5-inch storage devices and two 5.25 inch optical devices." ... With three drives you can get quite far :)

HTPC -- what?

[SuperDuG]

Okay so I had no idea what the hell an HTPC was, but before reading the article I was sure it was some type of disease... I was wrong

the Home Theater Personal Computer is no disease so rest assured you can breath again.

Now I understand the use of having a computer as part of your home entertainment system, and I see the merit in wanting it to "blend" with the rest of the objects in said entertainment setup.

Here's where I get a little fuzzy...

Am I the only one who just tossed their pc behind the entertainment center all together? With remote control (SSH/VNC/ATI Remote/Wireless Mouse) do you really need it sitting out and about?

As far as DVD goes, I already have a standalone player so there was no need to use the computer for dvd playback.

And as far as gaming goes, my gamecube with the wavebird suits me just fine.

So I guess I'm just wondering what this is useful for.

Re:HTPC -- what?

[evilviper]

With remote control (SSH/VNC/ATI Remote/Wireless Mouse) do you really need it sitting out and about?

For putting discs in it, of course. I also happen to have a headphone jack I put on the front of mine that I need to access regularly.

As far as DVD goes, I already have a standalone player so there was no need to use the computer for dvd playback.

If you think a standalone DVD player is perfect, you don't have any imagination at all. How do you copy DVDs from your stand-alone DVD player to your PC? How does your stand-alone DVD player make backups of your DVDs?

Even for just playback... How did you get a region-free, macrovision-free, DVD player, that will allow you to skip track 0 (forced trailers) and has progressive scan, outputs to RGB, SVIDEO, DVI, and Composite, for $40? (Price of a DVD-Rom) And that's the short list. Things like volume normalization (attenuation control) denoising and deblocking, are invaluable, and rather hard to find in consumer equipment. Plus you could easily do things like have stock-quotes pop-up ontop of the video being played, or any of millions of other things.

Re:HTPC -- what?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Maintainability? Looks? The VFD displays look nice. A PC behind the entertainment center means that the center is away from the wall more than necessary. I know one person that stores his HTPC in a closet with the relevant cables running out.

Do game consoles do HD? PCs do, at least with certain Radeon models with a component video adapter.

I have an HTPC, but I use it as a deinterlacer for a video projector. The projector's deinterlacer and scaler sucks, so I feed a video signal to a hardware deinterlacing board and the projector gets fed an RGB signal. A standalone deinterlacer + scaler costs twice as much as I paid for the PC and the hardware interlacer. There are some cheaper DVD players (around $150?) that have a hardware deinterlacer / scaler chip, but that ignores other video signals.

Other cases

[Albanach]

As ever, Coolermaster make some very nice cases also with more reasonable (circa $100) price tags that would be suited to such a PC. Here and here are some links. You do, of course, still need to add a PSU to these cases.

nothing beats my 19" media center

[mistermark]

Well... I've been busy finding such cases for the company I work for to build Media Center PCs... but personally, after seen, touched, feeled and used a lot of these cases, I can come only to one conclusion... Nothing beats my black 19" case media center

I have an Ahanix D4

[dsavitsk]

I have the Ahanix D4 which is similar but larger, and it is not all it is cracked up to be.
- I had to replace the "silent" power supply with a quieter one,
- the VFD software they ship is terrible,
- the build quality -- for anyone who owns actual high-end audio equipment -- is not actually that good,
- there is no dampening material in the case,
- getting the top off is near impossible and is bettered by other manufacturers, Ahanix esentially mackined a nice faceplate to put on a crappy old fashioned case,
- while the D4 says there is room for 5 total drives, I managed to get 3 in mine (partly because usinf an ATX board fills up on drive bay while other internal wires fill another),
- the front door just falls open rather than glideing smoothly (like would an actual high-end piece of equipment)
- the company lists it as shipping with 2 silent 80mm fans, instead it shipped with 1 loud 60mm fan

Anyhow, it works and it may be better than most things out there, but it is kind of crappy.