2010-12-15, 06:58
NewEgg Page: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?
Onboard Video: Next-Gen NVIDIA ION GPU
Wireless LAN: 802.11 b/g/n
HDMI: 1
Memory slot: 1 x 200Pin
Memory Type Supported: DDR2 800
Serial ATA: 1 x SATA 3.0Gb/s
CPU Type: Intel Atom D510 CPU (1.66 GHz, dual-core)
FSB: 667MHz
I got this guy from my local Fry's. It was an open box unit so it cost like $230. This particular system just needs RAM and a disk drive / storage device of some sort and you have a fully working system.
First Impressions:
This unit is so small and cute! Its seriously like 6" by 6" by 1" or so. Its set up so you open it up by unscrewing two simple thumb screws, and a 2.5" laptop HDD is installed / secured with a third thumb screw. THis means that this unit is 100% tool-less and can be assembled in about 5 minutes. The entire casing is plastic and the layout of the ports on both the front and back is a bit crowded / haphazard. However, it doesn't feel cheap or bad, and looks nice. The weird electroluminescent "Tron" wheel on the side is pretty cool. The unit comes with a foot that lets you stand it up vertically, and from other comments I've read online and my own experiences, it seems like this is the best configuration since it lets heat rise and vent out of the top.
What's Good:
As previously mentioned, this thing is tiny, cheap, and easy to set up. You've got HDMI, DVI, optical audio, E-SATA, and a ton of USB ports built right in, so all your modern home theater needs should be met. Obviously, there's no built-in BluRay support (no space for a drive). After I made the jump to Linux from Windows, this box would flawlessly playback any HD (H.264/AC3 MKV) rips I tried, including out ridiculous 13+ GB rip of Star Trek. Running Windows 7 Ultimate on the same setup resulted in dropped frames all over the place. Also, even though I haven't tested it out, this unit has WiFi AND comes with a VESA mount kit in the box, so you can easily stick this on the back of a TV or computer screen. This unit DOES have a fan cooler in it, but its no louder than the cooling fan inside our 57" DLP display (meaning you can't hear it unless you put your head right next to it).
What's Bad:
I got this unit to replace my aging collection of original XBoxes. One of them no longer boots, and the other locks up after 10 minutes or so of playback, plus they're Xboxes, so no HD playback, no 1080P output, and slowness with large libraries and "modern" skins. My initial test config was Windows 7 Ultimate x86 plus the latest Dharma build hosted on XBMC.org. The system could run XBMC, but had an annoying horizontal tear which appeared on video playback where horizontally panning content is displayed. I could not figure out how to resolve this issue, and didn't try because I was experiencing some fairly bad frame drop issues when playing HD content.
The other thing we used the old Xbox for was emulation fun. I got the latest version of MAME and my complete ROM set, a couple wired controllers, some friends, and gave it a bunch of test runs. Under Windows 7, this machine simply does not have enough CPU power to run all desired MAME games. I expected this, since even a dual core Atom is still an Atom, and the Nvidia ION stuff will not really help for MAME at all. Pretty much all old games are 100% playable. When you get up to more intensive 2D games there are problems. As mentioned above, switching to Ubuntu resolved all my XBMC problems 100%, making this box a seriously great, affordable choice for a small XBMC box. However, getting MAME up and running in Ubuntu was a royal pain in the ass. To summarize: There have been two major ports of MAME to Linux prior to the current one: xmame and sdlmame. There are some packages available in the default Ubuntu Software Center, but nothing that seems to actually install both a front-end and a recent binary of MAME. The current state of the project is that sdlmame has been merged into the main project, so to get the current Linux build you "simply" build it from source. Doing so requires a dozen or so different packages to be installed, and the compile job took a long long time using the measly Atom CPU. Once I had MAME up and running in Linux, we again did a lot of play-testing.
Old 2D games run just fine, and pretty much all the Neo Geo games are OK, and even load quickly. Games that run slow and have massively annoying audio skipping issues include Mortal Kombat (all of them including the original), Killer Instinct (both of them), Time Killers, Primal Rage, Street Fighter The Movie, etc. Street Fighter Alpha and its sequels all seem to work fine, as does Marvel Vs Capcom 2. We pretty much didn't even try to play any 3D games, even as old as the original Tekken, so cannot comment on them. Overall, the limitations are roughly on par with the original Xbox. You can get a bunch of cheap ($20 to $30) Xbox 360 USB controllers and use this system to have a lot of retro gaming fun
Oh BTW, the 360 USB controllers work perfectly right out of the box and the guide button IS mappable, unlike in Windows where its "reserved" and cannot be used for anything.
Overall: The Zbox is a pretty decent system, especially for the price. As a tiny silent box to run XBMC Live on, I definitely think its a good choice. As mentioned, for emulators, anything newer than SNES / Genesis will probably be an issue. I have not tried running PSone games on it but I suspect they'd run with mostly unacceptable framerates. Oh well, now I have an excuse to build another, emulator-specific box
Onboard Video: Next-Gen NVIDIA ION GPU
Wireless LAN: 802.11 b/g/n
HDMI: 1
Memory slot: 1 x 200Pin
Memory Type Supported: DDR2 800
Serial ATA: 1 x SATA 3.0Gb/s
CPU Type: Intel Atom D510 CPU (1.66 GHz, dual-core)
FSB: 667MHz
I got this guy from my local Fry's. It was an open box unit so it cost like $230. This particular system just needs RAM and a disk drive / storage device of some sort and you have a fully working system.
First Impressions:
This unit is so small and cute! Its seriously like 6" by 6" by 1" or so. Its set up so you open it up by unscrewing two simple thumb screws, and a 2.5" laptop HDD is installed / secured with a third thumb screw. THis means that this unit is 100% tool-less and can be assembled in about 5 minutes. The entire casing is plastic and the layout of the ports on both the front and back is a bit crowded / haphazard. However, it doesn't feel cheap or bad, and looks nice. The weird electroluminescent "Tron" wheel on the side is pretty cool. The unit comes with a foot that lets you stand it up vertically, and from other comments I've read online and my own experiences, it seems like this is the best configuration since it lets heat rise and vent out of the top.
What's Good:
As previously mentioned, this thing is tiny, cheap, and easy to set up. You've got HDMI, DVI, optical audio, E-SATA, and a ton of USB ports built right in, so all your modern home theater needs should be met. Obviously, there's no built-in BluRay support (no space for a drive). After I made the jump to Linux from Windows, this box would flawlessly playback any HD (H.264/AC3 MKV) rips I tried, including out ridiculous 13+ GB rip of Star Trek. Running Windows 7 Ultimate on the same setup resulted in dropped frames all over the place. Also, even though I haven't tested it out, this unit has WiFi AND comes with a VESA mount kit in the box, so you can easily stick this on the back of a TV or computer screen. This unit DOES have a fan cooler in it, but its no louder than the cooling fan inside our 57" DLP display (meaning you can't hear it unless you put your head right next to it).
What's Bad:
I got this unit to replace my aging collection of original XBoxes. One of them no longer boots, and the other locks up after 10 minutes or so of playback, plus they're Xboxes, so no HD playback, no 1080P output, and slowness with large libraries and "modern" skins. My initial test config was Windows 7 Ultimate x86 plus the latest Dharma build hosted on XBMC.org. The system could run XBMC, but had an annoying horizontal tear which appeared on video playback where horizontally panning content is displayed. I could not figure out how to resolve this issue, and didn't try because I was experiencing some fairly bad frame drop issues when playing HD content.
The other thing we used the old Xbox for was emulation fun. I got the latest version of MAME and my complete ROM set, a couple wired controllers, some friends, and gave it a bunch of test runs. Under Windows 7, this machine simply does not have enough CPU power to run all desired MAME games. I expected this, since even a dual core Atom is still an Atom, and the Nvidia ION stuff will not really help for MAME at all. Pretty much all old games are 100% playable. When you get up to more intensive 2D games there are problems. As mentioned above, switching to Ubuntu resolved all my XBMC problems 100%, making this box a seriously great, affordable choice for a small XBMC box. However, getting MAME up and running in Ubuntu was a royal pain in the ass. To summarize: There have been two major ports of MAME to Linux prior to the current one: xmame and sdlmame. There are some packages available in the default Ubuntu Software Center, but nothing that seems to actually install both a front-end and a recent binary of MAME. The current state of the project is that sdlmame has been merged into the main project, so to get the current Linux build you "simply" build it from source. Doing so requires a dozen or so different packages to be installed, and the compile job took a long long time using the measly Atom CPU. Once I had MAME up and running in Linux, we again did a lot of play-testing.
Old 2D games run just fine, and pretty much all the Neo Geo games are OK, and even load quickly. Games that run slow and have massively annoying audio skipping issues include Mortal Kombat (all of them including the original), Killer Instinct (both of them), Time Killers, Primal Rage, Street Fighter The Movie, etc. Street Fighter Alpha and its sequels all seem to work fine, as does Marvel Vs Capcom 2. We pretty much didn't even try to play any 3D games, even as old as the original Tekken, so cannot comment on them. Overall, the limitations are roughly on par with the original Xbox. You can get a bunch of cheap ($20 to $30) Xbox 360 USB controllers and use this system to have a lot of retro gaming fun
Oh BTW, the 360 USB controllers work perfectly right out of the box and the guide button IS mappable, unlike in Windows where its "reserved" and cannot be used for anything.
Overall: The Zbox is a pretty decent system, especially for the price. As a tiny silent box to run XBMC Live on, I definitely think its a good choice. As mentioned, for emulators, anything newer than SNES / Genesis will probably be an issue. I have not tried running PSone games on it but I suspect they'd run with mostly unacceptable framerates. Oh well, now I have an excuse to build another, emulator-specific box
I've been using Xbox 360 USB controllers, mostly because we have and play a lot of 360s at my house, and also cuz you can get some good ones for cheap.