simple media player/tuner with touch-screen capabilities?

[Fat Tone]

Hi

The TV in our kitchen is analogue. We lose the signal in a couple of weeks, so it's time either for a digibox or something new.

I have squirrelled away somewhere a 15" LCD touchscreen (prob VGA and USB, will have to check) so I'm wondering about finding something that will utilise it. The main requirement is digital TV (called Freeview here) but a small and simple media player, maybe with a web browser would get me serious brownie points with Wifey

Any suggestions?

Thanks

T.

[VJ]

Most dedicated media players (wdc, dlink, tvix, popcorn hour, hdi dune, qnap, ac ryan, ...) lack VGA output... either it will require some tinkering to get from component to VGA, or a different monitor, and they will not use the touchscreen... And I doubt that anything that is not a computer can use the touchscreen.

Avermedia has stand alone TV tuners that output to VGA. I don't know the full range, but they may have products that add network features. But most likely no touch screen support.

For a while I was looking for a decent media player, but ended up buying an small form factor pc on the ION platform, and it works quite well - cheaper than most advanced media players. The nvidia ion platform is quite performing, and allows for small scale computers (with Intel Atom). So if you find a deal on such a SFF PC, it may be the best option; add a USB DVB-T tuner to it and you are set to go. I would steer clear of the Zotac: it is noisy. Shuttle has fully passive models, but there are others. Not sure if this is the sort of thing you are looking for?

[Fat Tone]

Thanks Jorg, very helpful indeed.

I could just buy a Freeview LCD TV for £150 or less and be done with it, but this idea still appeals.

The Acer Asipre Revo 3700 seems to be the main option, but its £220 on its own. Plus I'd need the extra tuner.

What do you think to this e-Machines model? It is only £120. I'm only outputing DVB-T to a 1024*768 display so don't need the grunt to do full HD, but it does have to work seamlessly or I get it in the neck for not having bought a TV

Cheers

T.

[VJ]

It looks a bit similar to my Zotac. But I don't know enough about the AMD and GPU to comment on its performance. I quickly looked at the Geforce website, and could not find the 9200, I only managed to find the 9200M GS, which is a mobile chipset . Performance might depend on the software used to play back the TV: if it uses DXVA (GPU used for video playback) or not. My ION cannot playback high resolution (full hd) using the CPU, it manages using the GPU (but then the cooling fan makes a lot of noise). Any overlay (userinterface or so) causes the video to stutter, so either the GPU is near its maximum or the program is not written too elegantly.

The reason I went with the computer in the end is that a good media player is also expensive, and I found a good deal on the small computer. It was also after UPS dropped a computer, so I needed something for playback and my other computer is very noisy (I would have to leave it on as the source of the files).
Still, the downsides to the small computer is that you cannot upgrade components (sealed box), and it is noisy. But it offers much more options (I will reuse it in the bedroom, and as it is a computer I can stream live TV channels from a server - I would not have that option with some stand alone players) and more freedom. What also played for me is that I had a Windows 7 license I could use, I don't know how well things can be done with LinuxOS (compatibility, usability, ...), but there are distributions out there specific for media purposes.

If I would do it again, I think I might look to either build it (asus has some nice miniITX boards - but a self built easily doubles the price), look out for a passive model (maybe not so important for kitchen use - probably also more expensive), or even go with a standalone media player. A TV is more elegant as it is just one device, with a simple no-questions-asked user interface. No crashes, no software issues or glitches... A lot depends on what you want and need...

If the LCD were to have HDMI or DVI input, you would have a wider choice of devices (media players), but not if you want to use the touchscreen.

[Fat Tone]

Hi

I've decided to take a punt on it. It (along with TV tuner and usb/serial convertor for the touch interface) should be here tomorrow. Reading the reviews people seem happy with it's performance, particularly under Windows 7.

I actually need another PC in a few weeks for my youngest boy's birthday (he drove a hard bargain!) so if this doesn't work he'll get it. He doesn't need serious computer power, we have all the consoles for gaming.

I daresay there'll be more questions from me re media player s/w once I get this up and running. I definitely won't be sticking with Linux based on the reviews and my lack of experience.

Now the trick is to build this and get it working without wifey finding out, in under 10 days.

[VJ]

I complain a bit about the Zotac, but in all it is a great little thing: more powerful than most laptops, and highly convenient. It just has its little quirks I would have like to have known beforehand (e.g. it does not fit in its supplied vertical stand without scratching the case, the USB ports are upside down, and it does not wake up from standby properly - its wifi is disconnected, most likely a chipset problem, although laptops I know of with the same chipset that don't suffer).
But if he needs a computer anyway, go for it.

As for software, you could try a standalone XBMC, I think it even exist as a live CD. There are some other distributions as well (GeeXBoX, Mythbuntu, Element, LinuxMCE). Most come as LiveCDs, so that allows you to quickly see the userinterface and the possibilities. :-)
I use Windows Media Center on mine, with MPC-HC as media playback software and MediaBrowser to easily access/catalog iso files and other filetypes.

[Evildead666]

CPU seems to be a 1.3GHz dual core.

http://products.amd.com/en-us/NotebookCPUResult.aspx (2nd on list)

details :

http://products.amd.com/en-us/NotebookCPUDetail.aspx?id=673&f1=&f2=&f3=&f4=&f5=&f6=&f7=&f8=&f9=

[Evildead666]

This is pretty close to what you've ordered :

http://emachines.com/products/products.html?prod=ER1402-05

This dude bought one and got this info about it :

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=173386

Apparently, the video card is a geForce 8200, not the 9200M GS I was told by emachines´ tech support. In GPU-Z it is reported as "nvidia geForce 9200" (comes from the driver), but the GPU is identified as "C77/C78 Rev A2" (not so sure about the revision, going from memory here)

And in CPU-Z, the chipset is identified as "nForce 720a".

Ran a live cd version of Ubuntu, and lspci identifies it as MCP7A-S, while the video card is reported as an "8200"

Chipset info (It says just DDR2, but they can do DDR3 also):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_chipsets#For_AMD_processors_3

Integrated GPU Info (This is if its a mobile version of the chipset, further up is the 8200mGPU with slightly different specs):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_8M_.288xxxM.29_series

[Fat Tone]

It's no rocket, that's for sure. Putting win7 on was smooth. Its nice and quiet. Media centre transistions are smooth. The only issue is the tv tuner won't find any channels at all (faulty I think) and there aren't any win7 drivers for the touch screen but it's only a simple serial interface so it can't be too difficult to get going. Power management seems to work well so leaving it on for a quick start should be ok.

[Fat Tone]

Well it's all gone rather smoothly. Most of the time spent on it was Win 7 updates of course. Then the touch drivers (XP drivers running in compatability mode) and finally the TV tuner works fine with a semi-decent aerial. Performance is adequate for the TV/music/basic internet role but not much more. I am a little concerned about heat as it was getting pretty hot after a couple of hours ripping CDs this pm.
I have the speakers from an old Creative 4.1 system secreted on top of the cupboards all along the kitchen so the sound is nice wherever you are in there. At the moment everything is packed/hidden away until Sunday, so it should be a nice birthday surprise and my Brownie points ought to be back up to a sensible level for a while

It's pretty untidy in the shot below but you can see the relative size of the nettop and make out the USB TV tuner.

[Fat Tone]

BTW, Win 7 lists it as dual core 1.3GHz and show the gfx as nVidia 8200. The Windows Experience index is 3.5, which is dictated by the desktop graphics performance. All others are 4/5.