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A Truly Silent Home Theater PC Built for Linux
slimrabbit writes "LinuxDevices is reporting on a truly silent home theater PC that comes with its own Fedora 5 based quick install Linux DVD capable of installing a fully-configured FC5 system
with LIRC, KDETV, TV-Time and Kradio in about 15 minutes. The most notable features are its "church mouse quiet" 14dba power supply, TV-Out (SVideo and composite), component video, DVI and VGA out, and hardware MPEG support(XvMC). The company also supports and engages the Linux community through its sponsorship program. It is sponsoring knoppmyth and the Debian User Project and makes the mechanical drawings of its face plates available under the
GPL."
Finally I will be able to replace my XBOX, which is used solely for home theater purposes, with this HD-DVD capable system.
There is no HDMI, but component and DVI should suffice for most.
there is no issue with my network
A truly silent home theatre system? Hope it comes with closed captioning...
for watching silent movies
...and makes the mechanical drawings of its face plates available under the GPL.
Whoo hoo! Striking a blow for freedom! Telling those evil user-subjugating anti-freedom proprietary face plate manufacturers where to stuff it! I want one of these, because I'm sick to death of this nasty Antec case that won't let me distribute its modified face plate...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This is interesting - for $300 they've created something that beats me spending my own time and money on building myself. Previously when I've seen "silent" under-the-tv boxes, they've been closer to $800. This is enough to make the average geek think "I'll just build one myself". That, however, takes time and effort, and there's no guarantee that it'll work properly at the end of it.
To get a barebones, including a nice case and decent psu for this price makes it worthwhile getting over a diy system. Only question is, does it suck because it's cheap?
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
The submitter seems to have confused quiet with "truly silent." In addition to the power supply's 14db fan, there are two more case fans. The CPU lacks a fan, relying on nearby vent holes on the top of the case for air intake - don't set anything on top! It also uses a hard drive, apparently not in an acoustic enclosure, and lacks any noticable means of acoustically muffling the DVD-ROM drive. And in general, fan quietness often comes at a cost of unsufficient cooling. If it's reliable, at $550 for the loaded system, I could still see it being kinda cool. But not silent, and maybe not even all that quiet when the DVD fires up.
1. The power supply is 14dbA? Yea right. The reviewers didn't even test it. That number is highly unlikely, especially from an unbranded PSU.
2. What about case fans? What's the dBA on those? What about the CPU fan, which isn't even included? Both of these will have a big impact on the total overall noise of the system.
3. Not to mention the hard drive! But enough.
This is not a "silent" HTPC. It's a quickstart HTPC. It should be judged on those grounds. Calling it truly silent is just going to confuse people.
See http://www.silentpcreview.com/ for real silent computing.
Nice that they're prepackaging all this and supplying the drivers and all. But this seems to me to be a 6150 Mobo and case w/ remote. Good Mobo (use a 6100 for 2 Linux WoW machines), though sound was a pain to configure (ended up getting a external card).
Not sure how much the case is worth but the mobo is only $60-$80. Still guess it may be a good deal for those that don't wanna mess too much getting their own drivers and tweaking them properly.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
w00t
I've been battling my MythTV install for the past couple days, and am working on it as we speak, so this article is perfect timing.
This device appears to be little more than a barebones PC and a lot of marketing induced FUD. Others have already touched on the lack of HDD, CPU and RAM, so I won't bring those back up. What I will bring up is my suspicion of the true reason why it doesn't have MythTV - Because MythTV under FC5 is a serious pain in the arse. To quote Axel Thimm from this posting on the Atrpms-users mailing list:
"Anyway, all in all currently mythtv on FC5 isn't an easy ride. If you
don't want to get in adventures, don't upgrade yet. Wait at least
until the fixed kernel makes it into updates proper."
I had originally loaded FC5 on my MythTV candidate, only to run into whacky issue after whacky issue. I formatted and reloaded to FC4, following the holy grail of MythTV install guides, and the install has been much smoother. (I'm just trying to nail down the audio / video sync issues - I gotta get my line out to stop playing 'live' audio, dammit!)
I think you'd be better off speccing out a PC from NewEgg or something, rather than purchasing one of these boxes.
By following this guide, http://www.silentpcreview.com/article16-page1.html , I have built two machines identical to their setup and modded my power supply cpu with a low rpm fan. These machines have run solid for almost 4 years, until one of my motherboards crapped out. They are quietest piece of hardware I have owned since I sleep right next to them.
The main reason I am not engaging in any PC-based home theatre appliance is the 350-500 Watt power consumption.
I am always looking for energy saving, and I think it's insane to use that much power for playing/recording DVDs, music, compared to CD or DVD players/recorders, which consume much less energy.
I'd like to see a thorough comparison between the LixSystems' $560 system
/ cPath/24_27/products_id/237
h p?cPath=9&products_id=81.
http://www.linuxtechtoys.com/ltt/product_info.php
and Interact-TV's $600 system
http://store.interact-tv.com/store/product_info.p
And any others that might be out there.
Unfortunately, it's uber-expensive, costing around 2500 USD
$2500? For a 1GHz G4?!? You could buy a used "table lamp" style iMac on ebay or cragslist, rip off the monitor, plug a mini-dvi to S-video adapter into it, and have the same capabilities for 1/10th the cost.
Fe, Fi, Force, Fum, I smell the blood of a spilling nazi...
The Farewell Tour II
The PSU looks quiet, but it's not fanless.
There are two case fans - I couldn't see how loud they are, they say "Case fans as low as 1200rpm", but they look pretty small and small fans are usually pretty whiney.
The model that comes with a CPU seems to use a stock heatsink/fan and there doesn't look like there's a lot of room in there for a quieter solution. Also there are air holes straight above the CPU which are going to let the noise straight out.
I didn't find anywhere where they quoted a sound level for the whole system - maybe I missed it?
I have no idea how this compares to other HTPC form factor solution, but it sure isn't "truely silent".
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
After seeing and discussing a very interesting mythtv frontend at Lugradio, I went out and bought myself (on ebay) a T-Online Vision S100 set top box. These were built for a german VoD service, but they're easily available on ebay.
It is *totally* silent (no moving parts) and comes with wifi, ir remote, ide slots, a pci slot, tv/audio/spdif out, usb and runs linux beautifully. I can even use it as a Wifi AP. It's only 766MHz and the 128Mb DRAM is soldered on (non upgradeable) but this is all you need for a silent box.
And whereas most set-top-box PCs are reminiscent of a massive mid 80's VCR, this is actually no bigger than your average DVD player.
Note I say "frontend". You probably need a bigger case to get a PVR-150 into it, so it might work as a combined back/frontend, but in its natural form factor it's easier as a frontend. Though you can buy USB based DVB tuners, and assuming there's linux support, you've got your backend.
Requires some hardware hacking if you want to get a DVD drive or a 2.5" HDD into it (mine runs off a 1Gb USB stick), but remember - there are no moving parts, and it's got wifi built in!
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
Because I'm TOO LAZY to do so! Try taking Reading Comprehension 101, please. I said in the post that I didn't have enough interest to go through the work and frustration of setting up the system and getting Myth to work ONCE, for MYSELF. Do you really think I would go to the additional difficulty of setting up something for mass production if I'm not willing to do it once?
I have plenty of money...if someone else sold systems like that working 100%, then I'd happily pay for their services. Me=Part of the market, get it?
I talked to Andy, the guy who apparently is LinuxTechToys, a bit before buying the system. He was very helpful in clarifying questions the website created. When I asked him if my old MatrixOrbital VFD2041 display would fit in the case, that was all the prompting he needed to make me custom mounting brackets for it.
The system came packed in one inch of low-density foam in a cardboard box about half an inch too narrow. As a result, the FedEx ground trip from California to Washington left a sizable dent on the right side of the case, possibly from the slimline CD to IDE adapter which was packaged alongside. I was able to pound this out with a hammer, a block of wood, and some gaffer's tape without any damage to the paint, so no biggie.
Everything is a very tight fit. I had purchased a Samsung SN-S082D DVD burner for this system. I don't know if this drive is slightly larger than any of the others, but using the included IDE adapter, there was literally about a millimeter of space between the back of the floppy power connector's plastic tab and the front of the power supply - not enough room for the other side of the connector. I worked around this by grabbing an old fan power connector and soldering GND and 5V wires directly to the IDE adapter circuit board. (I needed to make one of these anyway for my VFD2041 anyway.) The 40-pin IDE cable rests snugly on the power supply, and I'm glad that power supply isn't a millimeter higher. There's a capacitor on the motherboard partially blocking the VFD2041's serial port, but that's OK because I only need pins 3 and 5 connected, it's the bottom row of pins that's obscured, and appropriately-sized wires will friction-fit into a female DE9 connector.
My first message from the system was from Asus's BIOS, which said something like: "USB overcurrent detected. Locate and unplug USB device. System will shut down in 10 seconds." The IR receiver draws its 5V from one of the USB headers on the motherboard - I'm glad they chose this location instead of directly from the power supply, otherwise I could have let the magic smoke out of something. With the IR receiver circuit board screwed in to place between the VFD2041's mounting bracket and the case, there's enough pressure to cause the very end of that 5V line to make contact with the mounting bracket. I removed the IR receiver, covered the entire receiver circuit board in electrical tape, tucked it in next to the VFD, and taped it in place. Problem solved.
The SN-S082D's tray is, at 13.8mm-ish, slightly wider than the acrylic front panel cutout. I had to sand the front panel quite a bit to get smooth operation. 100-grit sandpaper left the edges considerably smoother than before - they must have been CNC milled and left at that.
I do not have a dB meter or the appropriate room to verify their 14dB claim, however the system has a total of four fans (CPU, power supply, and two case fans) and the only noise I could identify after powering on was from the CPU fan (which is the stock AMD fan). The BIOS does a good job of spinning these only as fast as they need to go.
Debian Etch Beta 3 boots just fine on it, however I plan to netboot it (which the BIOS supports) so it'll take me a bit longer to get everything installed.
Bottom line - the system works, they will go the extra mile for you, but be prepared to put more time into it than you think you'll need.
if your not using HDMI
I'll overlook the minor typo here, but I think you're still missing something. If you're not using a digital signal, the signal will be downgraded to 540p or something similar (about 1/2 the bandwidth). First, this is not going into effect until around 2010, so this won't be a problem yet. Second, the signal downgrade, caused by the Image Constraint Token (ICT), is only for analog signals, namely Component, and devices that support digital signals, but not HDCP (namely computer video cards). Both HDMI and DVI support the same protocol, and both support HDCP.
Generally, if your TV has either DVI or HDMI, you should be fine. Furthermore, saying "everything" will be downgraded is just not correct. All of the downgrade crap comes directly from the vicious/senseless copyright restrictions of the new DVD generation (bluray/hddvd). Specifically, it does NOT apply to (a) home movies being played back in HD, (b) any HD signals from your cable company or Over-the-Air HD service, or for that matter, (c) any movies/video files in HD that you may have on your computer.
I appreciate your spite towards DRM and the like, but this downgrading is directed specifically at bluray and hddvd.
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"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
The correct spelling in my family is
GRANDMA Nazi
(but we don't call her that very often)