A lot of what I watch on TV is from the internet, in avi format etc or not even a TV program. Youtube, Google maps, photos and such. In other words I find myself wanting a computer connected to my TV. Now I've watched downloaded .avis for a long time - and I refuse to sit and do it on my PC because I am not a teenager, so I have tried various other approaches. Many years ago I even had a huge noisy tower PC connected to my TV setup - it was the easiest/cheapest way of watching DVDs at the time (South Africa, long story) - but subsequently I've tried more civilized methods like DivX DVD players or even USB compatible models and these have worked to a acceptable degree. This all culminated in the purchase of a PS3 three years ago. An excellent media device and cost-effective (at the time) Bluray player.
And I have never gotten around to building a proper HTPC as such. (Unless I count my fulltower AMD K6 based DVD playing monster of the 90s.) They have always seemed too expensive, too big and too noisy. And recently, not powerful enough - the PS3 narrowly beat out a Asus EEE nettop. (No optical drive and I am suspicious of Atoms...)
And I have never gotten around to building a proper HTPC as such. (Unless I count my fulltower AMD K6 based DVD playing monster of the 90s.) They have always seemed too expensive, too big and too noisy. And recently, not powerful enough - the PS3 narrowly beat out a Asus EEE nettop. (No optical drive and I am suspicious of Atoms...)
Yet here I have so something that could be called an HTPC. Its tiny, its silent and it cost me about $50.
An Android minipc it calls itself....essentially a smartphone minus the screen and battery, i.e the expensive bits. A9 dual core CPU and 1GB RAM putting it on par with a typical 2011 smartphone, think iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S2.
It runs some variant of Android 4.1 and so far seems to work perfectly. Its fast enough and played Youtube HD beautifully. Amazingly my Logitech 2.4ghz wireless keyboard worked straight away. I chose the cheaper non-bluetooth version and so have two USB ports, a microSD reader, Wifi and a miniHDMI port that obviously also handles the sound. Which seems to work fine as well. So far Ive connected it to my 23" Benq LED screen that serves as a bedroom "TV" (yes I know, disgusting first world habit, multiple TVs...).
More tests will follow. I am specifically interested in streaming avis via SMB (vs DLNA) and image quality on a real TV.
An Android minipc it calls itself....essentially a smartphone minus the screen and battery, i.e the expensive bits. A9 dual core CPU and 1GB RAM putting it on par with a typical 2011 smartphone, think iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S2.
It runs some variant of Android 4.1 and so far seems to work perfectly. Its fast enough and played Youtube HD beautifully. Amazingly my Logitech 2.4ghz wireless keyboard worked straight away. I chose the cheaper non-bluetooth version and so have two USB ports, a microSD reader, Wifi and a miniHDMI port that obviously also handles the sound. Which seems to work fine as well. So far Ive connected it to my 23" Benq LED screen that serves as a bedroom "TV" (yes I know, disgusting first world habit, multiple TVs...).
More tests will follow. I am specifically interested in streaming avis via SMB (vs DLNA) and image quality on a real TV.
In this general spirit of Androidness I even made this blog post on my Galaxy Note, which I can say was a plague. Be fun to see how the formatting turns out...
(Edit 2013-05-06 - Fixed formatting on PC...)
No comments:
Post a Comment