ZBOX ID82

(2012-04-18 17:32)onizuka Wrote:  My experience with the Intel 2000/3000 has not been favorable.

How so?

(2012-04-18 17:26)hdmkv Wrote:  It's $430 + shipping at superbiiz.com. Not knowing much about HTPCs, as this has no OS, would you need to install Windows 7 first? I'd want to use DanielaE's hd audio version here. Or, is there another way?

That price doesn't seem out of line. The parts alone would cost you around $280 to $350, I'm guessing (can't find the i3-2330 anywhere).

So, it's really close to $530 w/Win7.

(2012-04-18 17:43)Sdpbc Wrote:  

(2012-04-18 17:32)onizuka Wrote:  My experience with the Intel 2000/3000 has not been favorable.

How so?

Overall it was O.K. but it didn't like a few things my other cards handled fine such as 10bit (MPC-HC).
Strangely enough, the picture quality (looked dim, washed) on my Plasma (calibrated) didn't look up to snuff either compared to an AMD 6450 and Nvidia 520 i had around. Light gaming was not good either.

ID82-PLUS is now in stock at Newegg. US$449.

Unfortunately the memory-less, hard drive-less ID82 is still not in stock anywhere.

On the ID82, I'm getting enough dropped frames on (blu-ray, uncompressed) 1080p videos for it to be annoying. Not sure whether there's a workaround, but it looks like the vcpu is usually in the high 90s.

I should also mention this is generally on action movies with quick frame changes, e.g., Live and Let Die. Other movies, like A Christmas Story, play without issue, at least for the first ten minutes or so.

Further research indicates:

The vcpu load is high with hardware acceleration off. BUT, with acceleration on, there's a bunch of artifacts on the screen that make the movie unwatchable. That's because apparently in Windows, the DXVA hardware acceleration doesn't work with the Intel integrated graphics chip.

Unfortunately, the onboard wifi card isn't compatible with Ubuntu (or XBMCBuntu) drivers. That means unstable/non-working wireless, which has trouble even retrieving movie data.

There are several workarounds, one includes trying to get DSPlayer with ffdshow working in Windows to use Intel's QuickSync acceleration. That requires a bunch of extra work, and after a few hours, I gave up on it. Another is to use a wireless dongle, but at least one I had on hand didn't work.

It seems that at this point the best workaround is to return your ID82 and buy another HTPC that actually is "Linux ready" as this one falsely claims to be.

What about Win 7?

I want netflix, that = Win 7.

Anybody know where to get the NON plus version (the one WITHOUT memory, hard drives, etc...)

Check out http://www.canadacomputers.com/ they have the NON plus version. Their prices often beat Newegg as well...

(2012-05-16 22:12)shiggity Wrote:  Unfortunately, the onboard wifi card isn't compatible with Ubuntu (or XBMCBuntu) drivers. That means unstable/non-working wireless, which has trouble even retrieving movie data.

FYI, the WiFi is Ralink RT3290. Ralink released the linux driver for this chip on 05/29/2012. Ralink has an engineer working to integrate the driver into Linux kernel. Here is a discussion about this chip by Ubuntu users.