Laptop Client or HTPC?

[Suricatta]

l like both the Asus and the ASRock but it sounds like the ASRock is favourite for the graphics card.

I'd looked at the PCH but had dismissed it when I saw the price, it always pees me off when they're selling in the US for $200 but in the UK for £200, last time I looked it was $1.50 to the pound not 1 to 1.

Thanks for the advice everyone

Now to find an extra £280 for Lg 32pg6000 plasma TV, I've heard lots of good things about this.

[tonyimp]

Suricatta - It looks like you (and I!!) are maybe a month or two too early. My old 959 dual core opteron is flaking out, and I am ready to bury it in the basement (tuner cards and all), and buy a small nettop. The Revo looks like a GREAT candidate if space is a premium. It is very small. It does not have room for an internal DVD/BR player.
The Asrock does.
The Asus PC B208 also looks good. I would not dismiss it beacsue of graphics. The 4530 GPU is legit. I use it on my current system, and CPU util does not budge with HD playback, ever. The B208 comes bundled with a remote, which means that you might not need to hide a dongle.

So many unanswered questions - For me it may come down to who has the most mature drivers. The small B208 looks like a nice package. It is a good time to be thinking about one of these machines. enjoy!

[pBS]

is it the 4530 or 4350? and what drivers are you using in what os for that?
just curious..as i hadn't seen any of those around yet as a card..

[mvallevand]

The choice of ION based devices is exploding http://www.ionbased.com/2009/06/new-ion-...utex-2009/

Martin

[tonyimp]

Sorry - fat fingers. 3450.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814121259
It has taken a tremendous load off of my CPU. Using Nvidia purshow (spelling?) to offload the decoding onto the GPU. A pain to configure, and keep configured, but I think that is the software. The ATI hardware is good, cheap, stable and cool.

[SFX Group]

I don't have a PCH (no HD source yet...), but I do have 4 MVPs which are excellent for SD Mpegs and completely painless - no faffing about with codecs OS updates etc.

When I get around to looking at HD stuff, I'll definitely be going the PCH route rather than a PC client.

Just my 2p worth...

This is the ONLY reason i will not move away from the MVP, thats plug in and work, all updates (if any) are from the server, VERY real client server.

Waiting for Hauppauge to release there HD version, however i notice the HDPVR (USB version) they are showing the Playstation 3 as a "MVP", this may be concerning if they dont go down a HDMVP route...

[sub]

Waiting for Hauppauge to release there HD version, however i notice the HDPVR (USB version) they are showing the Playstation 3 as a "MVP", this may be concerning if they dont go down a HDMVP route...

I dont really undertsand your PS3 part of the comment, but the HD version of the MVP will be product kind of like the Popcorn Hour. Its entirely different hardware to the old MVP, and use different communcation protocols, so old software (like GB-PVR MVP client) wont work with it initially. Hopyfully Martin will port mvpmcx2 to it though, so it can be used as a GB-PVR client.

[aaronfos]

a solar powered one sounds great to me.
I like the ones of mac. cute, strong and very high tech. thinking about creating a blog and I wanted to know if it is enough to create it on a netbook or if i do need a laptop necessarily? I am working on a netbook rght now, but there are less programs on it, than on my mac. do you have any recommendations?

[McBainUK]

That link nearly and the thread resurrection nearly got you deleted as spam, but then I read your other post and it look ok so let you off.

I guess a Netbook would be fine for blogs, surely it's all online creating nowadays anyway.