In late 2010, we reviewed the ASRock Vision 3D, and declared it to be the best pre-built SFF (small form factor) HTPC we had reviewed. ASRock duly updated the lineup late last year with the Vision 3D 252B. It took over from the Vision 3D 137B as the flagship HTPC system from ASRock. On paper, the Vision 3D 252B appears to be an ideal candidate to take over the reins of the 137B as the most powerful and capable HTPC in its class. The capabilities come at a considerable price premium compared to what one may be able to build oneself (with a slightly larger chassis and higher rated PSU). With Ivy Bridge based systems already in-store, mobile Sandy Bridge systems are bound to get discounted, tempering the sticker shock a little bit.

Can the Vision 3D 252B live up to the expectations created by its predecessor? Are the updates revolutionary or evolutionary? How much difference does the next-generation CPU and more capable GPU make to the system? Read on for our review.

The last time we reviewed one of SilverStone's Grandia enclosures, it was the GD04, and it was a review that launched the first major revamp of how we test cases. Since then SilverStone has kept the Grandia series relatively staid, but at CES they were showing off the new GD07 and GD08, and today we have the GD07 in house.

SilverStone has turned the GD07 into an enclosure designed to cram as much computer into as small a space as possible within reason, and the horizontal orientation seems to make it ideal for use as a media center enclosure. However, inside it also has a tremendous amount of storage capacity that suggests it could also be used as a media server. The GD04 was a fine case once you tweaked it and added a fan controller; is the GD07 ideal on the first go?

Towards the end of June 2011, we saw AMD trying to create a HTPC friendly solution in the Llano series. By pairing a GPU with the CPU in the same die, users could obtain HTPC functionality (hardware decode and video post processing) without the need for a discrete GPU. Intel put a GPU and CPU in the same package (albeit, on different dies) in Clarkdale, and moved them both to the same package in Sandy Bridge. AMD's Llano was an aggressive response to Sandy Bridge on the gaming side. However, as a HTPC solution, it didn't excite us much (just like Sandy Bridge at launch). While Ivy Bridge is technically a die-shrink of the Sandy Bridge, only the CPU's architecture remains the same. The GPU has received extensive updates.

Some of our HTPC reviews have not been kind to Intel, particularly because of the lack of proper drivers and open source software support. With steps being taken to rectify the latter aspect, has the GPU become powerful enough to meet the post processing demands of the videophiles? What is the quality of the post processing provided natively by the drivers? Has Intel solved the 24 Hz bug? Read on to find out our take on Ivy Bridge as a HTPC candidate.

Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs are becoming quite popular as processors become more and more power efficient. Over the last few years, we have had a slew of budget SFF PCs. We have a number of powerful units targeting the mid-range and high-end markets such as the CoreHT and the Vision 3D series from ASRock. However, the sales volume lies in the budget lineups. Companies like Asus, ASRock, Sapphire and Zotac have been playing in this segment of the market. The trend started with pure Atom based nettops. The ION-based nettops brought HD video decoding and limited gaming capabilities to the budget lineups. AMD joined the game late with their AMD Fusion-based Brazos offerings early last year. Almost all of these offerings come to the consumer in the form of mini-ITX boards.

Is there anything smaller than a mini-ITX system? The nano-ITX and pico-ITX form factors pioneered by VIA are much smaller, but haven't gained much popularity. Today, Zotac is introducing their AMD E-450 based ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus. With a motherboard measuring 10 cm x 10 cm (smaller than the nano-ITX and just slightly bigger than a pico-ITX), it is definitely one of the smallest machines we have seen in our labs.The ZBOX Nano XS AD11 Plus comes with loads of exciting features, and Zotac gave us the chance to check out the unit prior to launch. Read on for our review.

Pulse-Eight is one of the companies tracing its roots to XBMC, and it is no wonder they have a host of interesting products in the HTPC space. We have already taken a look at their innovative HDMI CEC adapter product, and today we have their universal remote up for review. The Motorola NYXboard hybrid remote from Pulse-Eight is unlike any other remote we have evaluated so far.

There are plenty of universal remotes and HTPC control solutions at various price points. Some come with both IR and RF capabilities. Others are able to control multiple devices. Some have universal remotes integrated in a keyboard. However, the Motorola NYXboard hybrid remote is unique in terms of combining the optimal features necessary in a XBMC HTPC based setup.

The NYXboard is a dual-sided learning remote with both IR and RF capabilities. The RF capabilities enable it to interact with a PC, while the IR support helps it to control other devices in the home theater setup. The keyboard side also has basic mouse functionality. The NYXboard has everything going for it in terms of specifications. Does it translate to a good user experience? Read on for our short take on the Pulse-Eight Motorola NYXboard Hybrid Remote.

Late last year, we took a look at the ASRock CoreHT 252B, a Sandy Bridge-based midrange HTPC. We liked the CoreHT quite a bit, noting that the small form factor HTPC was a solid choice for most users in this segment. It hit all the key points, though it didn’t do anything in particular to set itself apart from the rest of the SFF crowd. Our main complaints centered around the hard drive performance, and to that end comes the ASRock CoreHT Server.

It’s very similar to the CoreHT we reviewed before, even sharing nearly the same specs. The one major difference: there’s two 500GB HDDs in the place of one, configured in RAID 0. Other than that, there’s the same mobile Sandy Bridge internals, headlined by the HM67 chipset and Core i5-2410M processor. Read on to find out if this update addresses our earlier concerns of if we're still left wanting more.

With the launch of Tahiti behind them, AMD is now firing on all cylinders to get the rest of their Southern Islands lineup out the door. Typically we’d see AMD launch their GPUs in descending order of performance, but this time AMD is taking a slight detour. Rather than following up the Tahiti based 7900 series with the Pitcairn based 7800 series, AMD is instead going straight to the bottom and launching the Cape Verde based 7700 series first.

Today AMD will be launching two cards based on the Cape Verde GPU: the Radeon HD 7750, and the Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition. As the Juniper based 5700 series never got a proper Northern Islands successor, this is the first real update for the x700 series since the launch of the 5700 series in October of 2009. Given the success of the 5700 expectations are going to be high, and to fulfill those expectations AMD will be bringing to bear their new GCN architecture along with a full node jump with TSMC’s 28nm process. But will this be enough to enable the 7700 series to replicate the success of the 5700 series? Let’s find out.

Software Blu-ray / DVD players are bundled with almost all OEM PCs and a necessity for consumers who want to enjoy their commercial optical media in the most legal manner possible. At AnandTech, we regularly use the offerings from ArcSoft (Total Media Theatre), Corel (WinDVD Pro) and Cyberlink (PowerDVD) in our reviews. Each of them has its own pros and cons. While WinDVD Pro is the leanest and most responsive of the lot, it is also pretty barebones. Total Media Theatre, on the other hand, has a very good user interface and integrates services like YouTube in a seamless and enjoyable manner. PowerDVD has historically been a leader in the features department, but the user interface and bloat used to be a turn off for most users.

Today, CyberLink is introducing PowerDVD 12 along with an updated Android / iOS app. With the Blu-ray functionality not needing any updates, most of the attention has been focused on the mobile apps and streamlining the user experience with the PC player. How good are the changes? Are they enough to make us change our opinion of PowerDVD? Read on for our review.

Approximately a year back, we reviewed the ASRock Core 100 HTPC which was a pioneer of sorts in the small form factor (SFF) HTPC space. Till that point, the pre-built SFF market was restricted to the anaemic Atom / ION based nettops. Core 100 was powerful enough to impress us and recommend it as a HTPC for buyers in the mid-range market.

Fast forward a year, and Intel has now moved forward from the Arrandales to the mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs for the notebook segment. ASRock has followed up their Arrandale based Core 100 with the mobile SNB based CoreHT series. In addition to the improvements that have been brought by the mobile SNB, we will also look at what ASRock has brought to the table in this review.

Today is all about Lynx, the desktop version of the Llano platform from AMD. Anand is reviewing the A8-3850 from a generic PC perspective, and Ian is covering its overclocking aspects using an ASRock A75 Extreme6 motherboard. I will be handling it from an HTPC viewpoint. Ever since ATI got acquired by AMD, HTPC enthusiasts have waiting with bated breath for a CPU-GPU hybrid to come out.

Does the Lynx fulfil their expectations? Read on to find out!

The popularity of Intel's HD Graphics amongst HTPC enthusiasts and the success of the AMD APUs seem to indicate that the days of the discrete HTPC GPU are numbered. However, for those with legacy systems, a discrete HTPC GPU will probably be the only way to enable hardware accelerated HD playback.

In this context, both AMD and NVIDIA have been serving the market with their low end GPUs. These GPUs are preferable for HTPC scenarios due to their low power consumption and ability to be passively cooled. Today, we will be taking a look at four GPUs, two each from AMD (6450 and 6570) and NVIDIA (GT 430 and GT 520), for which passively cooled solutions exist in the market.

Gaming benchmarks are not of much interest to the HTPC user interested in a passively cooled solution, and those will not be presented. Instead, there will take a quick look at the specs of the four cards and a presentation of the HQV benchmarks. We will then see how the cards handle custom refresh rates and fare at deinterlacing. After this, we will proceed to identify a benchmark for evaluating HTPC GPUs and see how the cards fare in the benchmark. We will see how one of the cards springs a surprise and analyze the cause.
Towards the end, we will have a couple of sections to cover some developments in the area of open source software for HTPCs.

Read on to find out which discrete GPU fits your usage scenario and how to tweak it for a good HTPC experience.

The ultimate goal of any HTPC is to handle any media content you might desire, all while consuming very little power and generating no noise. Package all of that in an attractive case that can fit in with your other home theater equipment and you’ve got a winning HTPC solution. Previous attempts have used NVIDIA’s ION platform (Atom + GeForce GPU), which met the low-power requirement but often failed at decoding certain video streams, and the Atom CPU was so slow that the UI interactions frequently felt sluggish. Other solutions have used higher performance CPUs, but such designs use more power, creating unwanted noise from the cooling fans, and there’s still the issue of media support.

Now, Zotac hopes to satisfy the needs of the low-power crowd while providing enough performance and decoding prowess to please A/V aficionados who want 24FPS content to work properly. To do this, they’ve turned to AMD’s Brazos platform, sporting Atom-like power with roughly twice the CPU performance and integrated graphics that are faster than ION and we might just have a winner. Zotac also includes a Blu-ray drive, for those who prefer disc content. Can the new ZBOX AD03BR-PLUS-U finally supplant the higher performance CPUs with discrete GPUs that so many HTPC users end up using in order to handle all of their video decoding needs? Let’s find out.

When Hauppauge introduced the original HD PVR in 2008 its component plus TOSLINK (optical S/PDIF) capture of 5.1 Dolby Digital and up to 1080i analog video was a revolutionary, and long overdue, shift for the home theater PC (HTPC) based digital video recorder (DVR). Finally there was a viable option for recording DRM-free high definition (HD) content. The device was far from perfect however, suffering from stability (I RMA’d four personally); furthermore, as a large external USB device, it didn’t provide the most appealing form factor for many installations.

Today we’re looking at Hauppauge’s second iteration of the HD PVR concept, this time as a standard height PCIe x1 device dubbed Colossus. It offers all of the previous capture options while adding HDMI input to the feature list.

AMD’s Northern Islands family is composed of four GPUs, roughly divided into two categories. At the top is the 6900 series powered by Cayman, AMD’s first VLIW4 GPU. Below Cayman are three more GPUs, all derived from the VLIW5 Evergreen generation (5000 series). The first of these GPUs was Barts, which is the basis of the 6800 series that launched back in October of 2010. However up until now we haven’t seen the other two mystery GPUs in the retail market. Today that starts to change.

The final two Northern Island GPUs are Caicos and Turks. They have been available in the OEM market for both desktop and mobile products since the beginning of the year, but as is often common with low-end/high-volume GPUs, a retail presence comes last instead of first. AMD is finally giving Caicos its first retail presence today; it will be powering the new Radeon HD 6450. Packing all the upgrades we saw with Barts last year, it will effectively be replacing the Radeon HD 5450. But how well does AMD’s latest stand up in the crowded low-end market? Let’s find out.

Dell is one of the leading vendors in the PC market to have a play in the SFF HTPC (small form factor home theater PC) space. In 2009, they introduced the first Zino HD HTPC, the Zino 400. It used the AMD's Athlon 64 2650e/2850e / Athlon 64 X2 3250e/6850e on the AMDRS780G chipset with the option of the integrated 3200 GPU or a discrete 4330 mGPU. It received a decent enough response to warrant a refresh of the lineup after a year.

In Q4 2010, the Zino 410 HD HTPC was launched. It made use of the same formula from the previous generation product (usage of CPUs meant for the laptop market, and pairing it with either the integrated GPU or a discrete mGPU). However, Dell learnt some important lessons from the first generation launch, which they have put to good use in the design of the Zino 410 HD HTPC.

We have had the highest end Zino 410 HD HTPC configuration in our labs since October 2010.   Read on for our take on the second generation Zino HD HTPC, and also why it took us so long to publish the review.

ASRock has yet another Mini PC in its lineup, this one makes use of an Atom dual-core processor and NVIDIA ION Graphics. In this review we will attempt to see if the ION 3D is capable of keeping up with its bigger brothers the Vision 3D and the 100HT-BD in the role of Home Theatre PC.

The Silverstone "Grandia Series" GD04 comes as a well regarded, oft recommended media center case. It has an attractive, understated look and the choice of silver and black lets it fit right in with other home theater components. Silverstone advertises it as having an effective positive pressure design to keep it relatively dust free. Unfortunately, despite its good looks and reasonable cooling, the GD04 makes a little more noise than you'd like.