Zotac ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus: Redefining the Small Form Factor PC
by Ganesh T S on April 11, 2012 5:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ZOTAC
- Fusion
- HTPC
The other important aspect for HTPCs is performance with network streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix. The ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus comes with a GbE port, so one should never be found wanting in terms of bandwidth. The bundled support for Wi-Fi serves as a backup if the unit is placed somewhere without wired access. We tested out both YouTube and Netflix with our standard test streams used in previous reviews.
The good news is that GPU acceleration is attempted and enabled in both Silverlight and Adobe Flash. The unfortunate aspect is that there are some CPU intensive parts which result in dropped frames.
With Netflix, we started out with a 3.6 Mbps video / 64 kbps audio stream. However, the plug-in seemed to sense the high CPU load and automatically shifted to lower bitrate streams (as can be seen in the screenshot above). This is despite the fact that GPU acceleration was attempted and enabled!
YouTube is a slightly different story. The CPU load is not that high, but it periodically loads up one of the cores fully. At 100% CPU loading on one of the cores, there were visible dropped frames in the playback.
I had encouraging words for the ZBOX at the end of the previous section, but, with OTT streaming, there is no way to put a positive spin on things. Either the drivers have to step up, or the plug-ins have to be optimized. Either way, the ZBOX can't be recommended right now for streaming high definition videos despite the presence of GPU acceleration.
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ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Nope, it is a standard MCE IR remote, similar to what was bundled with the Vision 3D and the CoreHT 252B.You will need a separate keyboard / mouse if you wish to do even basic browsing or navigation outside of a 10-ft UI (like XBMC)
ectoplasmosis - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
The photography in this article is truly shocking.Matias - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I also noted the very poor pictures! What the hell??ganeshts - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
I apologize for the poor pictures. We were running late for the NDA lift [ in fact, we missed it by a good 9 hours :( ], and had to make do with whatever I could snap in a hurry yesterday evening.adityanag - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
Ah I just posted a comment to this.. Well, nevermind what I said previously, these things happen :)einstein4pres - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
They appear to be taken with a Nikon P&S. I was curious, so I checked the exif info on the shot of the box that has an incredible amount of barrel distortion.I suggest taking the shot in the middle of your zoom range, which should help eliminate the barrel distortion, and increasing the F number (from f2.8 to ~ f8) to increase the depth of field (amount of stuff in focus). You probably need more ambient light, a flash, or a tripod to make this work.
freedom4556 - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
Test HD Netflix performance in your HTPC reviews, hell, throw in Hulu Plus and HD Youtube and any other major streaming you can think of. Reason I say this is I have an E-350 based HTPC and Silverlight (Microsoft's technology that powers Netflix) doesn't properly provide hardware acceleration to HD streams coming from Netflix. This results in an unplayable single-digit FPS on my Windows 7 HTPC. Youtube works fine, Adobe's got it figured out, and on the latest drivers too. Don't have Hulu, but still FIX IT MICROSOFT. Grrrr...Musafir_86 - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
-Did you check that you really have Silverlight 5 installed? Windows Update only pushes Silverlight 4 as far as I could see, so you need to download and upgrade manually. Also, AFAIK, only in version 5 it have proper hardware acceleration support.Regards,
-Musafir_86.
Kakumei - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
microsoft removed true gpu acceleration from their to-do list for silverlight 5.You cannot watch netflix hd on netbook cpus, sorry.
Matias - Thursday, April 12, 2012 - link
I agree, cant see HD videos on Netflix using the AD10 because of lame Silverlight...