[ion_man]

And... they want $649 for the ION2 Version:


http://us.shuttle.com/ConfigurePackage.a...SYX350-ION

You can't add it to your cart, but that's craziness

Huh? The shuttle XS35GT is now available and it costs roughly half that price.
Linuxtech.net has just added it to the Nvidia ION products overview with full details and availability info.

[matchsmalone]

Whoa, you're right. It's already available at Newegg!

It's still a little on the pricey side at 379.99. There are other next-gen boxes (Zotac HD-ID11) that are a lot cheaper. It's cool that this is fanless, but the Zotac is completely inaudible anyway.

In any case, it'll be interesting to hear some reviews.

EDIT: Comparing the specs of the two, (Zotac Zbox HD-ID11 vs XS35) here are the key differences as I see it:
1. The XS35 comes with a DVD-RW drive, 500 GB HDD, and 2 GB RAM, the Zotac has none of these things. Personally, I run XBMC Live from a USB stick, so I don't need the HDD. I watch mostly bluray rips, so the DVD drive is also useless to me.
2. The XS35 max LAN speed is 100 Mbit, the Zbox has Gigabit. I stream media files over the network from a server, so this is important to me.
3. No optical out on the XS35, whereas the Zotac has S/PDIF.

The rest are smaller differences:
5 USB ports on the Shuttle, 6 on the Zotac
4 in 1 card reader on the Shuttle, 6 in 1 on the Zotac
Zotac has a DVI instead of the VGA on the shuttle
no e-SATA or VESA mount with the Shuttle

As you can see, they have very different specs. The Zotac will definitely fit my needs better, but it's good to have different options out there for others I suppose.

[magnetik]

Whoa, you're right. It's already available at Newegg!

Might be a typo, but I was sure this was going to be a 1.8GHz variant CPU?

[ion_man]

2. The XS35 max LAN speed is 100 Mbit, the Zbox has Gigabit. I stream media files over the network from a server, so this is important to me.

This is a non-issue for streaming, even 1:1 blu-ray back-ups max out at 50Mbit.

100Mbit vs. Gigabit ethernet is only an issue if you frequently want to copy large files across the network to the local hard disk of the Shuttle.

[matchsmalone]

This is a non-issue for streaming, even 1:1 blu-ray back-ups max out at 50Mbit.

100Mbit vs. Gigabit ethernet is only an issue if you frequently want to copy large files across the network to the local hard disk of the Shuttle.

Good point. Thanks for that.

[SoxIn7]

Whoa, you're right. It's already available at Newegg!

You're right. The barebones version is still pricey at that point, but.... i couldn't resist and just picked one up.

[magnetik]

It's on Engadget - it must be real now

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/19/shutt...80p-ion-2/


For the money and fanless - it's pretty tempting. Would love to see a barebones ION2 version without the hard drive/DVD-RW drive if possible.

[TugboatBill]

I did a quick look through the specs on Newegg. Audio is 2 ch? WTF? Is that right?

[burritoboy9984]

delete...

[matchsmalone]

Incorrect... blurays max out at 50 MBps... while 100mbps will only have an ideal(which will never happen) throughput of 12.5MBps... So unless you are only streaming some micro blu-ray rips, you will need gigabit which has 125MBps throughput ideally (which again will never happen)

-Erik

Are you sure about that? I'm no expert, but a quick Google search turned up this and this, both of which indicate that blurays have a max video bitrate of 40 Mb/s and a max A/V bitrate (for both audio and video) of 48 Mb/s.

The math does also add up: 48 Mb/s x 60 sec / min x 60 min / hr x 2 hr = 345,600 bits = 43,200 MB or roughly 42 GB, which would seem about right for a 2 hour movie.

Your point about real vs advertised speed is a good one though. How fast does 100 Mb/s translate to in the real world?

[SX0T]

I was waiting for this to be released before I bit the bullet on anything. I'm going to wait for a couple reviews.

But at this point it seems like my top choices are

XS35 or Revo 3610!

At least I've got it almost figured out! I've been waiting to enter the world of htpc stuff for about 5 months now!

[burritoboy9984]

Are you sure about that? I'm no expert, but a quick Google search turned up this and this, both of which indicate that blurays have a max video bitrate of 40 Mb/s and a max A/V bitrate (for both audio and video) of 48 Mb/s.

The math does also add up: 48 Mb/s x 60 sec / min x 60 min / hr x 2 hr = 345,600 bits = 43,200 MB or roughly 42 GB, which would seem about right for a 2 hour movie.

Your point about real vs advertised speed is a good one though. How fast does 100 Mb/s translate to in the real world?

I stand corrected, sorry... I was half asleep when I wrote that this morning... As far as how fast it translates in the real world, there are too many variables that affect it. FWIW, I set my PC lan to 100mb and tried to play a 20mb (fixed it ) rip, and it had a lot of buffering issues...

-Erik

[matchsmalone]

I stand corrected, sorry... I was half asleep when I wrote that this morning... As far as how fast it translates in the real world, there are too many variables that affect it. FWIW, I set my PC lan to 100mb and tried to play a 20mb (fixed it ) rip, and it had a lot of buffering issues...

-Erik

Yeah, after doing a little more googling, it seems pretty common to get an actual throughput of less than a third of the nominal transfer rate.

Overall, I think that the conclusion should be that if you were planning on streaming HD videos to this thing, you should look elsewhere.

[matchsmalone]

I did a quick look through the specs on Newegg. Audio is 2 ch? WTF? Is that right?

Where are you seeing that? I can't find anything to that effect on the Newegg spec page.

This says that it has HDMI with 7.1 audio, and the northbridge is an Intel NM10, which also appears to support HD audio up to 8 channels.

Also, the Shuttle website under "Integrated Audio" says "IDT92HD81 Audio Codec with Azalia support." I believe that also would imply HD audio support up to 7.1.

EDIT: I think I figured out the confusion. Were you looking that this XS35? That one is different from this version which has Ion, etc. The first one only has GMA 3150 graphics, no Ion.

[magnetik]

Pretty impressed with the price point considering it had RAM/HDD already set - although a version sans RAM/HDD would be nice, as I hope to run XBMC from USB key - but I'm sure I can put the 500GB drive to good use somewhere else.

Waiting for the first reviews, but looks like it could be a real winner HTPC.