Ion VS Ion2 / Acer vs Zotac / Virgin Media Tuners

rG-tom

rG-tom

rG-tom

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Hey,

What are the major differences between ion and ion2?

Im looking for a HTPC atm, two major thoughtstreams are the Acer Revo and the Zotac Zbox. The zotac sports the newer Ion2 chipset.

It's main purpose in life will be streaming 1080p over a gigabit lan output via hdmi to my denon avr-4306. I currently have a the original western digital media player and I'm fed up of certain films not working properly on it that play flawlessly on my main pc! Also being able to use spotify etc and do a bit of browsing would be great.

Are there any alternatives to these 2 that allow expansion? I'd like to perhaps get a tuner that can use my virgin media cable TV feed? Do these exist and are they easy to set up?

Cheers

Tom.
 
As far as I understood Ion2 is at best on a par with Ion1 and at worst slightly inferior due to Intel changing the way the GPU can connect to the CPU with the D510. You should do your own research to check though, I'm far from certain.

It's going to be real pain in the behind getting cable to work with a tuner, see this thread for details of why. The best bet might be to to tune into the output of the Virgin box and use an infra-red relay, but that'll be a pain too. I just moved to Freeview, since 99% of what I watch is on there anyway, if you were desperate for sport I guess you could get a Sky online subscription maybe?

Personally I'd be very tempted to wait for the AMD Fusion chips. They could well blow Atom completely out of the water.
 
hmm thanks, the AMD fusion looks interesting but looks a long long way off? Not even any estimate release dates! Given the machines im looking at cost less than £200 , I don't think it's worth waiting what could be years for it, just upgrade to it when it comes out :D

Thanks for the info about the VM stuff as well, I'll probably stick with the V+ HD box, my house has no aerials or satellites (freesat) and as a lowly renter I can't go sticking them on!

Tom.
 
its actually illegeal to decode VM without using thier own hardware.

so you cant get it to run on a HTPC.
which is a shame really, as i prefer the interface on a HTPC.

some media center software, i know the linux ones, mythtv and xbmc can do it, allow you to use an ir blaster to control external boxes.

this allows you to feed the output from a VM box into a media center and have the media center control it via IR commands sent through the ir blaster.

as for ion vs ion2, get the ion.
intel made a few changes in ion2 that makes them suck for HTPC's
cant remember the changes off hand, but its something to do with the hdmi signal/video decoder
 
Oddly enough I've got a WDTV Live and am considering moving to a Revo+XBMC also for similar reasons to you (odd niggles with some files, and for better subtitling support).

If you do go that route, let us know how it goes, I'm a bit worried about how an Ion GPU (9300) and atom will do at decoding 1080p h264 mkvs smoothly with image enhancement.
 
I've just literally bought an atom based htpc from the members market as I wanted to be able to add a blu ray drive to it, so I'll let you know how I get on :)
 
I look forward to hearing. Are you going to go Windows, or something alternative like XBMC/Linux?
Did you get an Ion based machine, or are you planning to add a standalone card (if its a larger machine)
 
It's an ion machine:

Lian Li PC-Q07B Mini-ITX case
ASUS AT3IONT-I DELUXE - Dual core atom, fanless, built in bluetooth and wireless,ION graphics, media remote and PSU http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=iHWm73RqE6MCmCtw
Kingston 1gb DDR3 -
4gb SATADOM SSD -
160gb Seagate 7200.10
Click to expand...

I think it has XBMC on the ssd, but will probably end up with 4gb of ram and windows 7 so that I can use spotify and browse the net etc :)
 
Last edited:
No it wont a mate uses dual core atom machine as his full time windows 7 machine with 2gb ram and it works perfectly fine. Doesnt play games but everything else including HD video works perfectly.
 
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