Shuttle XPC M1000 - HTPC Done Right?
by Jarred Walton on October 17, 2005 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Closing Thoughts
Reviewing a device like the M1000 is difficult, as there's far more to it than hardware performance and features. There are likely many people who will be absolutely satisfied with the capabilities of the M1000. If you want a great looking HTPC and you don't want to assemble the system yourself, this is the best offering that we've seen. The Pentium M processor provides for low heat and power requirements, the case is similar in size to most A/V equipment, and it has everything that you need from a single vendor. The roughly $2000 price is higher than even faster mid-range computers, but someone looking for a complete HTPC solution won't have many other options. The low power and heat design could easily be worth hundreds of dollars from an A/V perspective.
The problem is, someone looking for an expensive but capable HTPC probably has some other wants as well. HDTV compatibility is a major flaw in the design. Sure, you can watch DVDs without trouble, and you can even download movies from the Internet and watch them on your HTPC. The NVIDIA output, either through component or DVI to an HDTV, works great. The inability to record or view HDTV broadcasts on its own makes this, at best, a secondary A/V component for many people. If Shuttle could add cards with HDTV support as well as SDTV support in place of the current AverMedia cards, the HDTV recording would be better, but it still wouldn't be perfect. (We'd love to see a card with component-in connections, if someone would create such a card...)
In the end, there are several things holding back the HTPC market, and none of them are Shuttle's fault. The DMCA and similar legislation are definitely not helping the home user get the most out of their electronics. Content providers share the largest portion of the blame, as standards like cablecard were promised years ago and yet content providers are still "nervous". MPEG-2 compression would be far preferable to the MS format, but the potential for piracy is always cited as a reason for alternative formats. As a standalone device, the M1000 works well, but the shared video aspect had problems with streaming, and the video codec was less than ideal.
What we want in a fully-featured HTPC is the ability to record SD and HD content, and even better would be the compatibility with cable and satellite subscriptions. You can get all that for $10 a month from many providers, though other compromises are made in those systems. HDD size is never as large as what we would like, and networking support is generally omitted as well - likely to keep the content secured on the device. Shuttle has the right idea with the M1000 design, but unfortunately, it won't meet the demands of many Home Theater enthusiasts.
If there's anyone to fault for the problems with HTPCs, it's Hollywood, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the cable and satellite providers because while the ability to create our dream HTPC exists in theory, it can only be achieved with more cooperation among all of these parties. The hardware manufacturers would love to be able to sell new hardware that supports the necessary features, but those features are as yet undefined. This isn't the first or last time that we're likely to see casualties of the DMCA and content providers. Last we checked, CDs, DVDs, and movie theaters were all making money in spite of the "rampant piracy" occurring online. VCRs didn't kill off movie rentals or TV watching, CD and DVD burners haven't brought about the end of their respective markets, and there's little reason to think that HDTV and HTPCs would do any more than modify consumer patterns.
Reviewing a device like the M1000 is difficult, as there's far more to it than hardware performance and features. There are likely many people who will be absolutely satisfied with the capabilities of the M1000. If you want a great looking HTPC and you don't want to assemble the system yourself, this is the best offering that we've seen. The Pentium M processor provides for low heat and power requirements, the case is similar in size to most A/V equipment, and it has everything that you need from a single vendor. The roughly $2000 price is higher than even faster mid-range computers, but someone looking for a complete HTPC solution won't have many other options. The low power and heat design could easily be worth hundreds of dollars from an A/V perspective.
The problem is, someone looking for an expensive but capable HTPC probably has some other wants as well. HDTV compatibility is a major flaw in the design. Sure, you can watch DVDs without trouble, and you can even download movies from the Internet and watch them on your HTPC. The NVIDIA output, either through component or DVI to an HDTV, works great. The inability to record or view HDTV broadcasts on its own makes this, at best, a secondary A/V component for many people. If Shuttle could add cards with HDTV support as well as SDTV support in place of the current AverMedia cards, the HDTV recording would be better, but it still wouldn't be perfect. (We'd love to see a card with component-in connections, if someone would create such a card...)
In the end, there are several things holding back the HTPC market, and none of them are Shuttle's fault. The DMCA and similar legislation are definitely not helping the home user get the most out of their electronics. Content providers share the largest portion of the blame, as standards like cablecard were promised years ago and yet content providers are still "nervous". MPEG-2 compression would be far preferable to the MS format, but the potential for piracy is always cited as a reason for alternative formats. As a standalone device, the M1000 works well, but the shared video aspect had problems with streaming, and the video codec was less than ideal.
What we want in a fully-featured HTPC is the ability to record SD and HD content, and even better would be the compatibility with cable and satellite subscriptions. You can get all that for $10 a month from many providers, though other compromises are made in those systems. HDD size is never as large as what we would like, and networking support is generally omitted as well - likely to keep the content secured on the device. Shuttle has the right idea with the M1000 design, but unfortunately, it won't meet the demands of many Home Theater enthusiasts.
If there's anyone to fault for the problems with HTPCs, it's Hollywood, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the cable and satellite providers because while the ability to create our dream HTPC exists in theory, it can only be achieved with more cooperation among all of these parties. The hardware manufacturers would love to be able to sell new hardware that supports the necessary features, but those features are as yet undefined. This isn't the first or last time that we're likely to see casualties of the DMCA and content providers. Last we checked, CDs, DVDs, and movie theaters were all making money in spite of the "rampant piracy" occurring online. VCRs didn't kill off movie rentals or TV watching, CD and DVD burners haven't brought about the end of their respective markets, and there's little reason to think that HDTV and HTPCs would do any more than modify consumer patterns.
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glennpratt - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
Mean't to clarify that, I was refering to MCE at the moment.Too bad shuttle didn't source a dual tuner card and at least leave a PCI slot open.
DigitalFreak - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
Unfortunately, you can't play a DVD via an extender, according to what I've seen. Obviously you could play it directly from an XBOX360, but what about all the DVD rips people have on their MCE / server machines?glennpratt - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
If you make them a format the extenders can play, then they'll play. It'll prolly have to be WMV9 if you wan't decent compression because Divx/Xvid don't work for the extenders as far as I know.When longhorn comes out, you should be able to stream, rip and compress DVD's ie stream them to extenders. They wan't to have the 'Trusted' stuff in place first so they don't get sued. Supposedly there's talk of letting the MCE machine convert MPEG4 compatible files on the fly to a stream that can be played on the extenders in the future.
DigitalFreak - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
All I can say is blah. You can build the same thing using m-ATX boards and cases, and customize it however you want. Still waiting for the Nvidia 6150/430 based motherboards to hit the market....Pandamonium - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
Nothing on the DIY market is as pretty and all encompassing as this. The DIY market has only a handful of cases that are low profile, and none that are low profile with a centered DVD drive AND VFD/LCD display. There is also no sound card (to my knowledge) on the market with built in support for 7.1 via RCA out.Perhaps a more valid criticism of the M1000 would have been lack of the SPDIF out.
JarredWalton - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
It has S/PDIF out - both coax and optical. It only has optical S/PDIF in.The M1000 is an awesome looking case. I think it looks great, and it works well for what it does. I really hope to see Shuttle (or anyone else) get a fully compatible HDTV machine out in the future. For $2000, that's what I really want to see.
DigitalFreak - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
...and BTW, why aren't they using DDR2 memory? If memory (no pun intended) serves, using DDR with the 915PM chipset results in single channel only operation. Seeing as how tests with the older 400Mhz bus P-Ms showed that is was memory bandwidth limited, this seems to be a stupid decision on Shuttle's part.JarredWalton - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
915PM should be dual channel DDR. It is simply the mobile variant of the 915P and will support DDR or DDR2. DDR2 wouldn't really help that much, and the BIOS at present doesn't have the option to tune the RAM for higher performance.mlittl3 - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
One of the big gripes about Apple is that you can only download audio in the AAC format. Everyone hates that you are locked into their format in order to buy music. I read in the article that WMCE only supports it's own format and not xvid, divx or mpeg4. Am I reading this correct? Are you only able to encode video on these devices in a proprietary format from Microsoft? How would it work if you wanted to transfer your content to a non-WMCE PC or non-windows PC?I guess that was a lot of questions. :)
BigLan - Monday, October 17, 2005 - link
It only supports recording to ms-dvr files (which are based on MPEG2.) MCE can play xvid, mpeg4 or anything else that you can play with WMP 10. You can also play back these files on other Windows boxes.There are some tools to convert ms-dvr to regular mpeg2 files, which can then be converted to xvids etc, but I've never used them.