[sraue]

It has the VIA Nano X2 U4025 dual-core, and VX900H media processor, and Chrome 9 graphics.

At £145 it is about £45 cheaper than the barebones Zotac Nano AD10 on Amazon.

What do you think of this? I don't know much about this hardware. Could it run XBMC with video acceleration? Or would the driver support be even worse than Fusion?

no this will not run XBMC (nicely), there was not much development with via gpu drivers the last 2-3 years, and they are in a very bad shape. no chance there...

[voochi]

no this will not run XBMC (nicely), there was not much development with via gpu drivers the last 2-3 years, and they are in a very bad shape. no chance there...

Oh well, that sucks. Would have been one of the cheapest barebones HTPCs if it was able to work.

What is even the point of Zotac releasing it in that case? It is clearly intended to be a HTPC because of the IR ports and bundled remote.

[Jean-Max]

no this will not run XBMC (nicely), there was not much development with via gpu drivers the last 2-3 years, and they are in a very bad shape. no chance there...

Hi,

Instead of XBMC (Linux version (*) is not "amd fusion ready" at this time), I use Openelec eden fusion x86-64 on my Zbox nano AD10 :
Most of things are Ok

nb : I have Nano AD10 with AMD fusion CPU/GPU, not the Via version

(*) : I installed for test, on the AD10 SSD, Windows 7 starter with Xbmc windows pre-11 : it was Ok

[steve1977]

My Nano AD10 barebone just arrived. Put on Win7 and equipped it with 2GB and a 60GB SSD. Pretty happy with it. Form factor is great and it plays 1080p without any stutters. It is not as as quiet as I would have hoped, but I can live with it (nowhere close to the Foxconn 330, which I used to own).

A few things didn't work out of the box, which I am looking for help and will also report back once I figure it out:

1) Remote only works via the external USB-IR receive. Didn't get it to work through the internal-IR although I enabled it in the bios. This is actually the most pressing issue and would love to hear any thoughts?

2) XBMC keymap is not optimized for the remote (yet). Most importantly, I cannot get the context menu to come up. Any idea maybe from experience with other Zotacs?

3) The Windows button from the remote pulls up windows media center. Any idea how to disable this? Quite sure that it will be an easy one?


Let me know if any questions about the box and thanks for help!!!

[T800]

Instead of disabling the green button you can do this:
http://inchoatethoughts.com/launching-xb...ter-remote

Use it for starting XBMC or bringing it to front.

[steve1977]

Solved 2 out of my 3 issues and made progress one. Think I am close, so any help is highly appreciated!!!

A few things didn't work out of the box, which I am looking for help and will also report back once I figure it out:

1) Remote only works via the external USB-IR receive. Didn't get it to work through the internal-IR although I enabled it in the bios. This is actually the most pressing issue and would love to hear any thoughts?

Besides enabling the internal receiver in Bios, I also had to install the driver. Here's the link:
http://www.zotacusa.com/zbox-amd-e-350-a...lus-u.html

2) XBMC keymap is not optimized for the remote (yet). Most importantly, I cannot get the context menu to come up. Any idea maybe from experience with other Zotacs?

Haven't figured this out, but hope it will be an easy one as well. I have now installed MCEREMOTE from add-on, but the missing piece is the "context menu". Quite sure I get this sorted shortly and will report back.

3) The Windows button from the remote pulls up windows media center. Any idea how to disable this? Quite sure that it will be an easy one?

Thanks for your quick reply. Would have hoped it works without any additional software, but the link below does the trick fast and well!!!
http://inchoatethoughts.com/launchin...-center-remote


And one last, additional question. I love the option that I can sleep the Zotac through the remote. Unfortunately, when "unsleeping" it, it is asking me for the user to log-in. This actually requires a mouse-click that I cannot do with the remote. There must be an easy fix that this menu doesn't come up?

[voochi]

And one last, additional question. I love the option that I can sleep the Zotac through the remote. Unfortunately, when "unsleeping" it, it is asking me for the user to log-in. This actually requires a mouse-click that I cannot do with the remote. There must be an easy fix that this menu doesn't come up?

Yes, in Windows this is easy. Just type "netplwiz" in the start menu search box, and then untick the option that says 'users must type name and password..yadda'

[steve1977]

Running into yet another issue. Everything went well as long as I had the Nano connected to my 720p LCD.

Now, I connected it to a new 1080p LCD over HDMI. Everything is ok, but from time to time the screen "blinks black". Basically, <1sec of black screen and then back to the skin. Truly annoying. Any ideas?

[bluray]

Running into yet another issue. Everything went well as long as I had the Nano connected to my 720p LCD.

Now, I connected it to a new 1080p LCD over HDMI. Everything is ok, but from time to time the screen "blinks black". Basically, <1sec of black screen and then back to the skin. Truly annoying. Any ideas?

you need to properly adjust your screen resolution to match your actual lcd screen resolution.

[phoenix2000]

I got my Zotac AD10 a few days ago. Added an OCZ Vertex 3 60gb and a 4GB Corsair. Loaded Windows 7 Professional 32 bit. Loaded updated drivers from the Zotac site and XBMC 10.1. Boot up time is insane with the Sata3 SSD.

Playing 1080p was fine, but could not get DD True HD or DTS-HD MA. Then I loaded XBMC_HD_Audio (Eden). Now, my receiver lights light up for both, and I confirmed 7.1 via Dolby and DTS speaker test MKVs. Ohhh the joy!!!!

Now the bad news. Playback is not perfect. For example in panning scenes, you see a jump every now and then. Also the sound will drop for a fraction of a second every now and then. I have tried all different XBMX video setting combinations, no dice.

As soon as I get my hands on a wired keyboard I am going to see if I can contol the shared video memory in the BIOS. Perhaps this will help.

Also as I was mucking with this and that trying to get the HDMI HD, I am probably going to load OS, Drivers and XBMC scratch just to make sure that is not it.

So for all of you asking, yes the Zotac AD10 does indeed do native DD True HD and DTS-HD MA not an LPCM conversion. You get the pretty lights everyone seems to want to see!!!

[phoenix2000]

The included remote probably does not have enough keys for all the functionality in XBMC. Now I have not done this with my AD10 yet, but I will be. With my classic XBox, as I did not use 0-9, in the Keymap.xml file I would remap these to Volume Up, Volume Down, Subtitles, Zooming, etc... Then using my Logitech Harmony I created screen buttons with the name "Subtitles on/off" for example and mapped the button to keypress 3 lets say. So long as in Keymap.xml keypress 3 was mapped to subtitles worked like a charm.

[bluray]

Playing 1080p was fine, but could not get DD True HD or DTS-HD MA. Then I loaded XBMC_HD_Audio (Eden). Now, my receiver lights light up for both, and I confirmed 7.1 via Dolby and DTS speaker test MKVs. Ohhh the joy!!!!

try it with the latest bd thor and transformer in 7.1 dts-hd and truehd, and you'll be jumping off your seat!

Now the bad news. Playback is not perfect. For example in panning scenes, you see a jump every now and then. Also the sound will drop for a fraction of a second every now and then. I have tried all different XBMX video setting combinations, no dice.

try to change the power plan in control panel to "high performance"

[phoenix2000]

Thanks for the heads up Bluray. I was already set to High Performance, but this thinking led me to setting the priority of xbmc.exe higher. This helped a little, but slowed Windows boot time significantly. This then led me to the 3D settings in Catalyst. Checking the triple buffer here and then turning off the Sync Playback option in XBMC under video settings resulted in a vast improvement.

Still jumps and drops audio but far less frequently.

So thanks...

[bluray]

Thanks for the heads up Bluray. I was already set to High Performance, but this thinking led me to setting the priority of xbmc.exe higher. This helped a little, but slowed Windows boot time significantly. This then led me to the 3D settings in Catalyst. Checking the triple buffer here and then turning off the Sync Playback option in XBMC under video settings resulted in a vast improvement.

Still jumps and drops audio but far less frequently.

So thanks...

to get fluent playback in xbmc, is rely heavily on proper settings of both audio/video. if one of those is not in sync, it'll cause the other one to have problem. different system is slightly different, you have to play around with different combination on your system configuration and settings to find the correct settings to get fluent playback.

[steve1977]

you need to properly adjust your screen resolution to match your actual lcd screen resolution.

Mmh, any idea how to do that. My Nano is set for 1920x1080, which is the same resolution as my Sony HX920. Any idea? This is extremely annoying and currently prevents me from using the Nano. Thanks in advance!