Neuros LINK Mixes Quiet, Aesthetics, and Ubuntu 121
jonniee writes with a link to Dr. Dobb's Journal's look at a rather cool living-room-suitable media-centric computer from Neuros (presented as being suitable mostly for developers and serious hobbyists for now), excerpting: "The Neuros LINK is essentially a quiet x86 PC running Ubuntu Linux with an ATI graphics card delivering video via VGA, DVI, and HDMI output. ... What makes the LINK such a compelling platform for these folks and Linux/open source developers in general is the recognition that a real business entity is stepping forward to spend the money necessary to market and commercialize what tech enthusiasts have been doing for years."
Nice (Score:1)
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Specifically any Nvidia chipset that will let you use VDPAU.
mplayer now supports it and you can easily drive 1080p with an underpowered PC, as long as the video card is up to the task.
(And if you're into that sort of thing, off hours you can be contributing to projects that use CUDA to offload to the GPU and thus do stuff much faster).
Re:Nice (Score:4, Interesting)
The 8400GS is a great choice for a linux media center. I got an Asus EN8400GS Silent 512MB and highly recommend it. 512MB is required to decode some reference frame-heavy h.264, and the 512MB version seems to have a better heatsink (and it is, of course, fanless). There are also two versions of the 8400GS chip (one based on an older Gxx architecture - I forget the specific number), and the Asus card uses the newer one which has better VDPAU features.
Of note, although not advertised, the card does have an SPDIF header - so with a simple RCA to pin-header cable you can get HDMI audio out of it with any DVI->HDMI converter. I've been using this card to watch a lot of 1080p HDTV lately without any issues. If you're looking for a cheap Nvidia card to do 1080p h.264 decoding with VDPAU to an HDMI TV (with audio), it fits the bill perfectly.
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Have they fixed the problems with b-frames in playback with mplayer/VDPAU? If they haven't (and I can find no indication that they have) then it's pretty worthless for a lot of people.
Yes but... (Score:2, Funny)
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Looks pretty good on features and price (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks like it is only $250, not too bad. I could probably use it replace the Roku and AppleTV, which each kind of suck but at least do their one function well.
I wonder how quiet it is, some of the pictures had fans...
Re:Looks pretty good on features and price (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how quiet it is, some of the pictures had fans...
At least you clicked the link. ;-)
In the text accompanying those pictures it said 27dB. Not quiet, but not noisy either.
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Looks fine to me.. This is meant to go in an entertainment center, so you should be comparing it to your DVD player or your A/V receiver. That's the reason for the horizontal case. Also, that keyboard has been around a while and it's actually very ergonomic for non-desk use. It also has good battery life and quite long range. It has a trackball that you use with your thumb and the mouse click is on the index finger of the right hand. Left and right mouse buttons are also found on the left side. My on
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sounds like poor drivers what OS where you using?
keyboard does suck (Score:2)
I personally would not bother getting the keyboard version. I would watch movies on it, not type my memoirs.
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If you want something a bit more compact, you could always use something like the palm-sized Logitech diNovo Mini keyboard [logitech.com]. I use one with an old Mac laptop I've relegated to handling internet media, and on the whole I'm pretty happy with it.
But my main reservation about this gadget is that it won't replace my (much-hated) LG HDD recorder for live-to-air stuff. I might need to spend some time looking at MythTV for this, but there seems to be a lot to learn here. Last ti
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what do you do first - turn the television on with an IR remote.
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FYI - XBMC now runs very well on the AppleTV (aside from HD support). You can replace your Roku and AppleTV with, well an AppleTV. It removes all the crappy restrictions and provides a beautiful interface my 3 and 4 year olds can use and my wife is happy with. It might be worth a look if you haven't tried it
Re:Looks pretty good on features and price (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how quiet it is, some of the pictures had fans...
Maybe the fans are to be pointed down to keep it levitating like a hovercraft.
A very silent hovercraft.
That runs linux.
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I have one, and honestly the noise isn't noticeable. Without anything else on (pc, ac, etc.) you can hear it, although I would definitely say it is certainly quiet enough. Also, I only turn it on when I actually want to watch tv or a movie, and in those situations I never notice it.
Looking good (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, I'd like a system much like the PS3 to use for a entertainment hub, something the PS3 is actually quite good at doing and doing quietly as well. Its just too bad that its a Sony product.
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"Noise: under 27dB"
That's from the device's specs [dvrupgrade.com]. Although I'm not terribly impressed, that seems rather high for a box that needs to be near my entertainment center.
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"a minimum of 20 times quieter than talking"
You failed math, how many times? You can't turn that statement into a mathematical equation. If you were able to do so, you would have stated it properly.
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I asked for a mathematical equation, not for a circuitous rationalization for your poor grammar.
Had you stated, "1/20th the volume" your statement could be incorporated into any mathematical equation. 20 times quieter is meaningless marketing babble.
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y = 20 * x
ergo, x is 20 times quieter than y, assuming x and y are based on linear units of quiet. The math gets slightly more complex if you insist on using logarithmic units like decibels. I leave that as an exercise to the reader with reference source here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure [wikipedia.org]
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"something times less than"
"20 times quieter" means "20 times less than"
It is a meaningless expression. It is a grammatically idiotic expression, which does NOT translate into mathematics.
You have left NOTHING as an exercise for the reader. Express yourself properly.
An educated person who wished to express the concept you wish to convey, might very well say "this machine produces a noise level .05% of ambient noise in a quiet room"
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When flaming someone else about their math, it helps to get your units right: .05% != 20x
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LOL - I made the error, caught it during proof reading, and decided to let it stand. And, you're the first to catch it! ~13 hours for an obvious mistake to go unchallenged on a geek forum? I guess geeks != math major college grads!
However - I don't think that you typed what you meant to say, either. How about .05% != 1/20th ? To say precisely what the GP was ATTEMPTING to say, I would need to remove the decimal point.
But, I'm confident that those who commonly use terms such as "20x quieter" aren't goin
27dB is not good compared to PS3 and AppleTV (Score:2)
Exactly, I think 24dB is closer to what we want. And I don't want something close to normal talking at all if I'm going to watch a movie. I don't think I want to even have anything close to whispering at 1m, which I assume would be like a movie theater.
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Look no further, check out the ION offerings. They can be run fully passively without any moving parts (although manufacturers tend to build complete systems with a single (smallish) fan, you can get a passive Ion mobo with a passive fan from Zotac) yet fully capable of playing back anything. And yes, it does run Linux (http://www.xbmc.org/ [xbmc.org]).
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Agreed. My PS3, HR20 (DirecTV DVR) and Xbox360 are the same age (approaching 1 year) and the PS3 is quieter than either of the other 2. I use the Xbox to play games on but I won't watch programming on it (I use UPnP streaming on all 3 devices). The PS3 runs louder than the HR20 if the PS3 is loading from a game disc but when playing BluRay they are about equal (and no, I'm not saying the HR20 has a disc, just that it is comparable in sound) and when viewing from the HDs or streaming the PS3 is the quietest
ATI? eek! (Score:4, Interesting)
Using ATI in a linux MPC... that's just asking for trouble.
I hope they give these things a _good_ testing...
I see they are using an ATI Radeon HD 3200 - does anyone have any gaming performance numbers handy for this card, without all the benchmark-website-bullshit? If this thing works well enough... I may consider finally getting away from nVidia. But I thought these Radeon HD cards were giving Linux trouble? Did this get fixed?
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Yeah - I've had and heard nothing but trouble when it comes to ATI and video playback. NVidia + their binary all the way thanks.
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No kidding. I'm running the same thing and it's been nothing but trouble. I did at least manage to get the proprietary drivers to work after upgrading the BIOS. That gets me DVD playback at high quality. But I haven't figured out the HDMI connection yet, and flash is horrible.
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Yeah my thought exactly
The ATI drivers don't support accelerated H.264 yet either do they?
Re:ATI? eek! (Score:5, Informative)
There is another reason for considering Nvidia. They have vpdau [wikipedia.org]:
VDPAU (Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix) is an API designed by NVIDIA for its GeForce 8 series and later GPU hardware, targeted at the X Window System on Unix operating-systems (including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris).[1][2][3] This VDPAU API allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware.
This would allow them to use fairly quiet and cheap processors, like the atom, and still get flawless HD 1080p output.
Re:ATI? eek! (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't know, but do the current ATi drivers manage to sync to vertical refresh correctly? I've never gotten it to work on a TV output with ATi chips. No problem with the nVidia driver.
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Holy crap! I love my Atom netbook... except when I'm playing video. If this tech works with most of the popular video player software (including Flash), then I can totally see myself buying an NVidia netbook.
Re:ATI? eek! (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience, watching video on Linux is hardly limited by the graphics card, and you certainly don't need a gaming monster to get get good video. I'm only interested in a good Xv implementation for hardware scaling, since the video formats are evolving anyway.
My current media machine has a Mini-ITX motherboard with integrated Intel graphics and a Core Duo T2300 at 1.66 GHz. When I watch 720p H.264 (that's the most my monitor is capable of), only one CPU is used at 60%, and of course everything is smooth. The machine has only one fan, rated at 24 dBA, but it's running at 7 V instead of 12, so it's even quieter. The power supply is a passively cooled one (like PicoPSU) rated at 80 W.
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My HTPC is equipped with intel graphics and a dualcore atom. It struggles with 720p under VLC, but it's smooth sailing under Media Player Classic (under Windows XP). I guess if I overclock the graphics card it could run 1080p too, but haven't tested it since my monitor goes to 1440x900.
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The problem with h264 "benchmarks" is that every h264 file can be different and
the fact that you managed to get one particular sort of high res file to play on
a particular system doesn't necessarily mean anything. Playing BBC or Apple web
content is a bit different than playing and HD-PVR captures or BD rips.
A $200 popcorn hour will play everything you throw at it.
So will a $300 Revo running Ubuntu or Windows.
This Neuros box is an interesting idea that was obviously flawed and
somewhat behind the curve the mo
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The problem with h264 "benchmarks" is that every h264 file can be different and the fact that you managed to get one particular sort of high res file to play on a particular system doesn't necessarily mean anything. Playing BBC or Apple web content is a bit different than playing and HD-PVR captures or BD rips.
Actually, my 60% CPU is surprisingly consistent over a wide range of different 720p H.264 sources, using MPlayer.
However, I do have some experience on the graphics card limitations. On my somewhat older Intel laptop (Pentium M 1.6 GHz, 855GM chipset), 720p H.264 does not play smoothly using default settings. But it does with software downscaling, even though it increases the CPU load. Actually, this limitation went away with recent Xorg drivers, but at the time it was an interesting point to note.
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Well, I need a gaming 'monster' mostly because I prefer to render the video in OpenGL and do the processing on it as a textured plane, with things like OSD and subtitles as another texture, that can have an independent "resolution".
This means that I can use triliniar + anisinotropic filtering for scaling, and the hardware definitely can do that quickly (and it's not codec/container specific)... and even with a 320x420 video, I can have native resolution subtitles.
It also means I can easily get vsync working
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Well, I need a gaming 'monster' mostly because I prefer to render the video in OpenGL and do the processing on it as a textured plane, with things like OSD and subtitles as another texture, that can have an independent "resolution".
This means that I can use triliniar + anisinotropic filtering for scaling, and the hardware definitely can do that quickly (and it's not codec/container specific)... and even with a 320x420 video, I can have native resolution subtitles.
It also means I can easily get vsync working.
(i use mplayer, btw. not sure if other players can do this, commonly)
Interesting, I also use MPlayer, but I had not though about those possibilities. This seems to work fine on my GMA950, except for the scaling/filtering options.
Thus I admit that you could get a somewhat better picture with more hardware :) But there's also the tradeoff with noise, size and power consumption.
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What's wrong with ATI? Depends on your point of view, but I suspect you may be comparing apples to oranges.
If you take nVidias own driver and compare to ATIs own driver then yes, I agree that nVidia wins hands down. But we all hate proprietary drivers don't we? So if you compare an nVidia open source driver to..oh wait, it's still in alpha? Ok, if you compare alpha nouvau or whatever it is called, that currently doesn't ship with most distros and doesn't have much 3D support, to the open source driver f
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On the other hand, the OSS drivers seem far more stable than the binary ones on hardware they do support (i have an older X1600), and a media player box like this is unlikely to need very much in the way of 3d capability... In this instance, the open ATI drivers are probably the best choice.
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Even for power users... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even for power users, HTPC's can be aggravating. Why, in a world where you could put together a tiny monster PC for around $300 would someone buy a MivX or NMT player? Simple. Take any HTPC on the market, ANY.
Plug it into a regular, yellow, composite television.
Plug it into an HDTV via component or HDMI.
If you can turn it on, boot it up, and play a video on it without a single configuration edit without any hassle from installation, then please, reply to this topic because as far as I know, an HTPC that does this is akin to a fucking unicorn.
I have an iStar Mini and a Popcorn Hour, both NMT devices. The Mini's in the living room. If I wanna take that thing to the kitchen TV (13", composite in), I just put the movie on a USB stick and it's showing the film inside of the 2 minutes it takes to set up and boot. When it goes back to the living room, it's an HDMI connection to the TV and coax to the (admittedly cheap) surround system. Works just fine, automatically detects 1080p at startup. Over component, I'd have to hit two buttons to get 720p or 1080i (worst-case, 480p is instantly automatically enabled).
I had a friend try to build a MythTV box. Hours went by as this man tried to get MythTV to show up at a decent resolution on his HDTV (this was a few years ago, via DVI). This is a guy who runs and actually knows how to use Gentoo, and would be a sysadmin if he wasn't a programmer at a Fortune 500 company (A good one, you've probably used their services at some point(s) in the last six months). On the AppleTV, the first test isn't even a possibility without some insane level of hacking (especially if you want color out of the composite out). I can only IMAGINE what it's like an a Windows Media Center rig. And in the last two cases, playing videos other than Quicktime or WMV, respectively, (let alone something like MKV) is a hassle that goes more hours into getting up and running than those devices are probably WORTH.
As crappy and low-end as the interfaces are on mini video boxes are, they happen to work remarkably well for the simple process of "Plug into TV, watch stuff", whether "stuff" is on a usb stick or the network. Give me a call when the HTPC manages to get there on a remote-friendly interface.
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Well, I did battle with a couple of those little standalone media players, but in the end I went to the trouble of building and configuring a full-fledged (XP and MediaPortal based) HTPC. If you can live with the limitations of those stand-alone things, then fine. But when you run into an unsupported codec on those things, that's it, your only option is to convert the video on a PC. If you want a feature it doesn't have, say you want to add a tuner or whatever, you're stumped. Network performance (if any) u
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Check out the MSI media live bareBones. My daughter is watching Backyardigans right now via Ubuntu/Boxee. TV out has always worked, even 'out of the box.'
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I had a friend try to build a MythTV box. Hours went by as this man tried to get MythTV to show up at a decent resolution on his HDTV (this was a few years ago, via DVI).
Things have improved considerably with regards to Linux support of TV out. My latest build involved little more than a change using the Nvidia control centre to get s-video out working. Video out over HDMI was even easier.....plug and play quite literally. Audio over HDMI would have been similar if I had managed to wire up the motherboard t
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The problems with a HTPC being plug and play are not at the high level. As many posts in this discussion demonstrate, many people have an easy enough time installing XBMC on Linux and the machine works well at
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That's the problem, trying to record and encode TV on a regular schedual yourself instead of getting someone else to do the hard work for you....
I grab all my regular TV shows from usenet. I have the Alt.binz usenet client hooked up to the the tv and hdtv rss feeds from newzleech. It checks my wildcard text filters against the rss feeds, grabs the nzb files for the tv shows I want to watch and then downloads them for me overnight, automatically runs the parity check and fixes broken files then unrars the sh
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Maybe it will force Adobe to fix flash on Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Adobe Flash Player is the biggest CPU hog I have seen on my Ubuntu box, even with hardware acceleration enabled. Things have improved with version 10 but the experience is still considerably worse than flash performance on windows. Maybe if a few hundred thousand Neuros devices are sold, it will convince Adobe to put a serious effort into fixing these issues.
Fans? No no no (Score:2)
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There are modern versions of the Dreambox available, like the DM800 (single tuner) and DM8000 (4 tuner slots), the tuners are modular, you can fit hard drives and it supports usb/esata devices too...
I have a DM800 because i couldn't justify the cost of the 8000 and it works nicely... The only issue as far as a media player is concerned is that it will only play mpeg2 and h.264 (which it does in hardware because the cpu is too slow on its own), but most videos can be acquired in those formats these days anyw
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A friend of mine bought a DM8000, and yes they are very pricey...
It has a 400MHz cpu, and a hardware decoder for mpeg2/h.264, so using vlc it will play anything that can be played on such a spec of system, not sure if divx/xvid would play correctly.
I only have the DM800, which has a slower cpu than the 8000, most of the videos i want to play on it are h.264 encoded anyway which it plays using the hardware support. It handles 720p video perfectly, and i don't have any 1080p video to try with it.
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"Time to watch a movie, let's shut down computer A and watch it on computer B!"
MP4 / Patents (Score:1, Interesting)
I notice that it supports MPEG4 with mplayer/xine/vlc, I wonder if Neuros licensed the relevant software patents to allow them to ship this codec.
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But ATI doesn't support hardware x264 acceleration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But ATI doesn't support hardware x264 accelerat (Score:1)
Also, this ATI is close to release it a seen here [phoronix.com].
Of course is not perfect yet and they have been pushing the release date but still, i don't see right now a big gap between NVIDIA and ATI.
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Re:But ATI doesn't support hardware x264 accelerat (Score:4, Informative)
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Also, if we're talking high end processors, we aren't talking about this particular device
A 2.8GHz single core is a pretty careful choice. It's a pretty good balance that supports a wide range of content, remember not everything supports multiple cores well (or hardware acceleration for example). This processor does everything up to 1080p24 (what you see on apple.com for example) and also supports flash video, etc. On one hand, there's a great deal of discussion of ION or other graphics centric solutions, which are great when that hardware matches *exactly* what you want to playback, but then
Acer r3600 with NVIDIA ION (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA reads like an ad...
Here's another:
Have a look at the r3600 from Acer. I have just bought one and it is fantastic. It passes the girlfriend test by being silent and attachable to the back of the TV -- no wires visible except the power cord, and it is pretty happy at decoding HD video, thanks to NVIDIA VDPAU (ION platform). Costs next to nothing and is available in a Linux configuration. Couple that with a nice TV and a wireless keyboard and you get a pretty neat setup...
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I take you live in Europe or, more likely, the UK? AFAIK, devices like the r3600 are still not for sale in the US. Anyone want to suggest reasons for this? It's pretty much impossible to find ION-based netbooks here as well. No major PC manufacturer that I can find ships anything other than Intel-only systems. Since the ION is an Atom-based system, you'd think Intel would be happier seeing these shipped than systems like the Neuros running ATI gear.
Fit PCs (Score:1)
I can't comment about true HD capability, and relative speeds, and respond to "does it do better than " type questions, but that machine looks like a regular PC in a shiny case to me. If you want something a bit more revolutionary, then a Fit PC might be more up your street: http://fit-pc.co.uk/ [fit-pc.co.uk] (and yes, it can run Linux).
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In the specifications they say that h264 is fully hardware accelerated, but I don't think it's possible with an intel GMA500 (at least under linux), is it?
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You're right, it won't under linux.
Actually the GP is rather wrong in saying it will run linux. If you want to use your GMA500, you're stuck with a specific kernel version, a specific mesa, and a specific x.org, with no upgrade path for now.
The Z series Atoms are nice, the chipsets paired with it are very low power, the PowerVR graphics kicks ass, and that tiny box is really sweet. But if you want linux, you have to stay away from Poulsbo.
ATI graphics on a media pc? (Score:1, Redundant)
Why are they using an ATI card? Nvidia cards have much better support under linux generally, including full 1080p h264, mpeg2 and wmv hardware decode support. ATI don't have any hardware video decoding support at all, so to play HD films you need a much more beefy cpu creating a lot more heat and noise than with the nvidia solution.
ATI's drivers still haven't really got much better, tried installing them on a friend's Ubuntu pc the other day for a radeon 3650. Trying to enable compiz caused the entire syste
ati graphics on Linux? (Score:1)
Aesthetics??? (Score:1, Flamebait)
If a black rectangular box - even a somewhat shiny one - strikes you as an example of aesthetics, you really need to pause "2001," lock the screen, step away from your Linux box, go up the stairs out of your mom's basement, put on some sunglasses and sunscreen and go spend some time in the big room with the bright lights and the blue ceiling.
Find some people on the street - people whose life does not revolve around Linux systems of their own construction - and ask them whether they think a black box, shiny
Why not Nvidia ION platform? (Score:2)
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I just built an Ion based Myth Frontend. It's awesome:
http://pdavila.homelinux.org:8080/blog/?p=347
http://pdavila.homelinux.org:8080/blog/?p=348
It's a great box for MythTV (frontend), XBMC and Boxee.
I love NeurosTechnology but yeah why the hell did they go with an ATI card? They can still replace it. They're not locked to it by any means.
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Nice posts, but you should probably introduce the concept of paragraphs at some point.
USA only (Score:1)
Unfortunately for would-be worldwide adopters, a significant portion of the neuros.tv catalogued television content is only served to US ip ranges.
The good news is that foreigners will still be able to view water-skiing squirrels.
Cue the haters: (Score:2)
Ubuntu and Aesthetics? NEVA!
Lost me at "ultimate media convergence appliance" (Score:2)
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DirectX is really only relevant if you're intent in creating an HTPC is really to create a modern equivalent of an Amiga or Atari ST: namely a computer that uses a TV as it's monitor. The "Charlie Chaplain problem" really isn't too terribly relevant for an HTPC. There is certainly the various HTPC type apps to consider but for the most part on any platform the "usual stuff" is pretty much off the table.