~~~~ Something rather new and shiny for all you HTPC lovers ~~~

Looks nice (in black) but also too pricey for what it is (no disrespect meant to OCUK)

All swish and well designed but its only a 12.1 " screen (albeit touch sensitive) so it shouldnt be that expensive ontop of a £200/£300 case

Also the faf (imo) of having a small screen in windows config (no eyefinity, as I believe it only works with same sized screens), ie yur playing everythign in a window on the tv/monitor screen, so that nothing "overlaps" the htpc screen / and no point disabling the small screen as a small fortune has been paid for it.

(and another thing, I REALLY want a reasonably small case for a lot of hdd, but it would be for hiding away, not for sticking under /near the tv -and 10 hdd is going to sound horrendous without spindown configured well ....and before anyone suggests it, ssd's would be too pricey and storage would be relatively limited compared ot normal hdd's)

Love the look of the dac's although havent priced up comparisons so I cant compare as yet
 
I might be missing something but I don't get it.... what is the purpose of a touchscreen on the case? Presuming this sits in an AV cabinet, in which case unless the screen detaches I'd have to get up to use the touchscreen?

I use an Apple TV with XBMC installed, coupled with an iPad with the Constellation App.... surely this wins hands down? (Noisy NAS with fans is in the basement).

Please enlighten me if I've missed the purpose of this thing :)
 
The DAC/amp is meh. The casing is nice but I'd imagine most of the money is spent on that rather than the internals. I don't think there's any line-outs which is unforgivable given the internal amp will suffice for only a certain range of speakers. Lack of connections is poor too at this price point, the 8470 is a chip found in several portable players, and while I know implementation is just as important as the chip being used, for the money I'd expect something better. Also the USB controller isn't that great.

The HTPC cases are nice if you're loaded, but the M7 seems rather pointless given if you can afford OrigenAE stuff you could buy a sick DAC/headphone amp with plenty of inputs and outputs and a dedicated stereo amp that can drive any speakers. Of course as an all-in-one it might be okay, but there's no room for expansion the same way I could take my last DAC w/a headphone amp and add both a dedicated headphone and speaker amp to it if I wanted to and take digital audio from several sources all at once.

Also yeah, touchscreen HTPCs are obsolete now you can control them from smartphones and tablets, or using '10 foot' UIs on your TV.
 
Indeed, but as said, there's limited digital connectivity and expandabiltiy, which is off-putting. If you decided to get high end headphones like, say, the HE-6's or HD800s, you might find the DAC section fine but the headphone amp lacking, in which case you'd be stuck as there's no line-outs to connect something more high-horsepower to.
 
OrigenAE Cases are very nice indeed. I have the H6 in Black in my living room :) Its discontinued now, but i think its the best looking of them all.

origen-ae-h6-2.jpg


Looks rather nice sat on a proper hifi rack across the room... (if you can fine a hifi rack deep enough)

i cant really see the point of a touchscreen tho. surely it'll be on the other side of room anyway? plus you wouldnt want it on when watching a movie on the tv anyway... they do look rather tasty tho, i just cant see the point.

its a shame they dont still make the H6 and the H5 though.

anyone know if the remote uses the ehome driver? i currently use a microsoft remote with the black receiver, but the remote is a bit tatty (and a bit ugly)
 
I have several questions:

1) What type of touchscreen is it? Does it support multi-point touch?

2) Where does the LCD connect to? If you are running a mini-ITX board with one output, how can you run the built-in LCD and big TV?

3) Why? Do people normally sit in front of their TV cabinet to play with their PVR, or do they just use a remote?
 
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