Sunday, March 13, 2005

New $400 Piston- Shaped Media Center PCs

Not sure if round is the new black, but here are some well-priced piston-shaped Media Center PCs from FIC.
At $400 and definitley not your boxy or even Mac Mini themed form factor, these are definitely interesting and unique, but we have to wonder if pistons really mate well with traditional media components.

More technical details from ExtremeTech: "The Piston is built around a pico BTX motherboard, featuring Intel's 915G chipset. It supports Intel P4 Prescott processors up to 3.8 GHz, and either an embedded graphics solution, or a PCIe x16 graphics card. It supports two DDR 333/400mhz DIMMs, and includes on-board 7.1 audio.

"The motherboard sits in the middle of the cylinder, and the storage drives are mounted underneath. The system supports one standard 3.5" SATA or IDE drives, and one optical drive (DVD or CD). In addition to supporting a single PCIe x16 for graphics, the system also supports a mini-PCI card. That's good enough for a TV tuner or Wi-Fi card. They wouldn't open the system up for me, so we can't provide any details of how crowded it is inside. But without at least a half-height PCI card, it won't be usable as an HDTV HTPC.

"On the front, along with an eight-in-one card reader, DVD slot and an air intake vent, it includes an LED display. The system's bios supports DVD and CD playback without booting into windows, and uses the front display to indicate track and other system information. The Piston features a unique speaker configuration as well. Two small 3-watt satellite speakers are included inside the box, and project audio out of two small grills located on the upper hemisphere of the front panel. A subwoofer is built into the bottom of the sphere, turning the Piston into a portable audio solution as well.

"On the back, there are four USB ports, S-Video, SP/DIF out, Ethernet and audio. Two more USB ports, and an additional FireWire and SP/DIF port are located on the side, along with a headphone and microphone port. FIC plans on selling the Piston in a barebones configuration. It's available now in Germany and should be coming to the US in a few months. The company expects it to sell for around $400.

"If they can deliver a stable system to the US at a price that's competitive with Shuttle, we think they'll have a winner. With a cavalcade of rectangular SFF cases coming to market, FIC's unique look might disabuse the DIY crowd of the notion that it's hip to be square. "

We Say...Reminds us of those round 1970's Spaceball radios in sunburst orange and other decorator colours. But it would be really cool to have one anyway.

Source: Ubergizmo via ExtremeTech

# Permalink   Posted at 2:46 AM        0 comments       Email this Link

---