Western Digital has had a lot of experience in the digital media adapter (DMA) space and it’s apparent it has invested that know how into the Live Hub. The Live Hub is very interesting in that it is the first one I have looked at with onboard storage and legacy video out ports. In fact, it has a ton of storage, one terabyte! I guess I should have expected that from Western Digital. The storage enables movie purchases from Blockbuster, downloadable rentals, and the ability to have local personal content, so less worrying about home network OR broadband issues.

Storage

As I said above, the Live Hub comes with a 1 TB drive and therefore can load a ton of videos, photos, and music on the drive which must be copied over a network. It does not act like a standard USB drive, a slight drawback, but comes with an easy program to automatically mount a Windows drive. I could even set it to synch with another network drive. The system would also let me synch external USB storage and even network drives with the unit’s internal hard drive. Very cool, although the kind of functionality expected from WD.

Video

WD’s Live Hub offers a lot of video options. Not as many as the Boxee Box, the Swiss army knife of video, but close. The Live Hub offers video services from AccuWeather, BlockBuster, MediaFly video RSS, Netflix, and YouTube. Video RSS allows you to access virtually any video feed that publishes RSS, which is most.

The Live Hub played most local video I threw at it with some exceptions, some major ones. I had some audio synchronization issues with some 1080p files from a camcorder, MTS, and movie trailers downloaded off web sites. These were in standard formats, not exotic ones. Looking through the WD forums, I am not the only one with the issue. I cannot imagine this issue not being fixed with a future firmware patch.

I wanted better quality of on-line video. It seemed regardless of which on-line service I used, the quality wasn’t where I wanted it to be. Netflix, Blockbuster, YouTube, it didn’t matter. On YouTube, it was like I was using the SD feed, not the HD feed. It could possibly have been my cable operator and bandwidth switching, I don’t know, but I tried it at all times of the day with the same result. The exception was BlockBuster which is a download and play service. Its video looked really good.

Blockbuster video was a very unique experience. Most services are streaming. Blockbuster is download and play. That, in a sense, helps buffer network congestion at peak times. Most interestingly is that it let me pick where I wanted to download content. I added an external USB hard drive and it was going to let me save it there… that really got my propeller whirring about the possibilities here of portable, DRM-encrypted content. The video looked great, too.

One thing I really appreciated was the proper handling of VOB menus. When I do pay to have horse shows videotaped, I get a DVD in this file format.

The Live Hub had the most complete array of video outputs of any DMA I have used. It had HDMI, component, and composite. You might say every TV has HDMI, which is close to the truth, but how many are there and are they filled?  Many TVs I have seen sold in the previous few years have 2 HDMI ports, one filled with a set top box and one with a Blu-ray player. That’s why component video is important. Also in a media room where you have a projector with just ONE HDMI cable input.

Finally, unlike all the DMAs I have explored so far, because I had a local hard drive, I didn’t need the Internet or a PC to access video, albeit needing the PC to get the content on the device.

Music and Audio

The device handled my favorite streaming site, Pandora, so I was very happy. Live Hub also comes with Live365 Radio and of course with MediaFly RSS, it can pick audio as well.

Local music and audio off a networked PC was handled like Google TV and Boxee, via UPnP. Just authorize your music folder to be shared, have your PC on, and Live Hub automatically detects it. Unlike the Apple TV, I didn’t have to have my media player open as I was streaming from the PC.

As with video, with my audio on the local hard drive I didn’t need access to network bandwidth or a PC to get to music.

Photo

Live Hub supports Flickr photo online services. Given that I use Picasa by Google, this didn’t help me a whole lot but to those who use Flickr it does.

Photos on a networked PC were handled like local music, via UPnP. Local photos on the Live TV Hub didn’t require a PC or bandwidth.

Games

Games are not available on the WD Live TV Hub.

Web

There is no “browser” and therefore no support for the “web”. Why does this matter?  It depends on each person’s preferred content. For me, it meant no Picasa photos, no Amazon VOD, no games, no CNN, and no ESPN scores.

Social Media

The Live TV Hub supports Facebook, but not very efficiently. I got to see two entries on my 60″ TV. If anyone out there knows how to increase this, let me know. Also, because there isn’t a QWERTY keyboard, “commenting” is harder than texting on a cellphone in the 90s. Links to websites cannot be displayed, either….

Communications

Chat, instant messaging or video chat is not available.

Networking

Like the Apple TV, Google TV, and Boxee, the WD TV Live Hub supports 100 Mbps hard wired Ethernet and WiFi N.

Simplicity

Setting up the WD TV Live Hub was relatively straightforward for the online services. To enable the hard drive sharing capability from the PC, I had to run a program which mounted the drive without having to go through Windows networking. It worked and was simple. Getting content on the Hub was a very different story. While I like the ability to just copy files over the network, I would have also liked to do a first time copy via USB at 480 Mbps. I have gigabit routers but unfortunately my home cabling is CAT 5e, maxed at 100 Mbps. It took me almost a day to fill up the drive from my PC.

Things got easier when I did get the content on the drive. WD has built a very attractive user interface (UI) called Mochi, very straightforward and upscale. The only issue I had was with the speed of drilling into folders. It crawled when I would click into a local or networked folder. Much slower than the other devices.

One UI feature I’d like to see added is a smartphone controller app. Every device has had this so far. It would make logging in, adding RSS feeds, finding the right YouTube feeds, etc. all the easier.

Home Connectivity

With HDMI, component, and composite video out, the Live Hub was very connectable to virtually any TV. Also, USB, network, and networked PC storage was very connectable and synchronized in an incredible variety of ways.

Most impressive is that the Live Hub is officially DLNA certified to the latest 1.5 level. That’s nice to know given it should stream content to other DLNA devices.

Price

The Western Digital Live TV Hub can be purchased for $199 which, remember, includes a 1TB hard drive, which is worth around $100.

Conclusion

The WD Live TV Hub is the box for sophisticated users who see value in the on-board storage of their content. The Live TV Hub has some incredible features like 1TB of on-board storage for content which eliminates the multiple failure points that could bring down other DMAs, namely the cable network, cable modem, router, and network. The storage capability with mounted network drives and synchronization and indexing of all other storage was awesome as well. It’s flat out the only device that allows for saving DRM-encrypted onto other storage devices, in this case via Blockbuster. It’s the only device I have tested so far that is DLNA certified as well.

I’d like to better understand why basic video streaming didn’t look as good as the other units I tested. I hope it was just my unit and not others. I’d also like to see a fix for the issue where some 1080p content had audio synch issues. The Mochi interface was simple and sexy, but at times was very laggy for me. I don’t know if this was inherent to the UI or content indexing, but it definitely had lag when clicking into folders. Finally, I would really like to see a smartphone-based controller to specifically help with text entry.

Next up, I will take a look at the Roku XD S.

Pat Moorhead is Corporate Vice President and Corporate Marketing Fellow and a Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only. Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

See all Pat’s bio here or past blogs here.

Follow @PatrickMoorhead on Twitter.

Top to Bottom: viliv X70, viliv S5, and BlackBerry Storm

 future.  Check out the introduction, and part 2 (where I take an extremist view on why I believe MIDs will dominate the earth), and part 3 (where I take the extreme view of why I believe that, in fact, PCs have no reason to worry about MIDs.) — certainly not even in the near- or even mid-term future.  In part 2 and 3 I obviously took an extremist’s view hoping that by turning up the contrast ratio, you got a better flavor for the debate.  In part four through seven I start to drill down specifically on some of the different MIDs available on the market today.  In this blog I will specifically specifically give my impressions on the viliv X70 EX 3G MID.  I spent a few months using the device in different scenarios and will briefly give my plusses and minuses on the device.

  Viliv X70 EX 3G Basic Specs 

Plusses

• Durability: The X70 EX, like the S5, feels very dense and solid, unlike a few in the plethora of netbooks I have tested.  You can tell that a lot of mechanical and industrial design time went into this unit.  
• Weight: Incredibly light for a computing device with a 7″ screen. even lighter than my 7″ Archos 7 IMT, although the S70 is plastic, the Archos is metal.
• Keyboard haptic feedback: Like the S5, if you can get comfortable with the keyboard and touch interface, you will appreciate the feedback you get when you touch the surface.
• Wake time: Fast resume from sleep (5 seconds), cold boot (50 seconds), and hibernation (28 seconds).
• Display: Huge 7″ display is very bright for inside use and the reflective surface is good for videos. The 7″ display, unlike the S5 or M1 with a 4.8″ display, is large enough to navigate Windows with its icons and menus.
• 3G WWAN with retractable antenna: HSPA/3G is a built-in feature with model I purchased.  This truly makes this device mobile.  Mobile internet and mobile productivity wherever your carrier provides service.  I just popped in my SIM card, loaded my AT&T software and it just worked.  I believe this is a MUST-have feature for any MID.
• Webcam and microphone: The orientation of the camera is toward the user, so it is intended for video chatting or conferencing with programs like Skype.  I did not test this feature, so cannot vouch for its quality level. 
• Built-in stylus: While this may seem like a small item, if you have ever had a device with a stylus, you have probably lost many.  Having a built-in place to store it is a big plus.   
• Video playback: Like the M1 and S5, the X70 ran standard (non HQ/HD) YouTube and Hulu videos reasonably well, although CPU utilization was between 60-80%. MPEG2 files at movie bit rates and iPod compatible formats ran well with the “viliv player” at CPU rates of 15-30% and a lot higher if you use a program like Cyberlink.  ”viliv Player” is difficult to use and I would have preferred something like a pre-bundled Cyberlink product. Like old media players, the only way to play a file with the “viliv Player” is by adding to a playlist.  I couldnt just associate video files with the app, click the icon, and make it play.  I suppose the hardware video decode works on their built-in player particularly when I compare the higher CPU rates when I used different players.
• Video out options: With the optional VGA or component out cables, I easily connected my S70 to a Dell 30″ monitor at 1920×1080 resolution.  This essentially extends your desktop by 23 inches and allows, when connected to mouse and keyboard, to serve as a mini-desktop. 
• Basic Web: Like the M1 and G5, the X70 handled lighter, non java-script laden and multiple unit Flash 10 web sites quite well.  Google, Wikipedia, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter ran just fine unless on FaceBook I ran HD videos.
• Productivity: Like the S5, the X70 came with a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office and I connected to the AMD corporate network.  Outlook ran surprisingly well, but I wouldnt recommend doing many things at once because the system starts to bog down.  Email, documents, presentations, light spreadsheets, no problem. The 7″ versus 4.8″ display on the M1 and S5 really helped me a lot working with with Powerpoint and emails.  Do your self a favor though, If you are working hours and hours, plug in a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
• Games: Like all the MIDs I have looked at, Flash games played but with CPU between 80-100%.  I completed an install and benchmark for World in Conflict.  The FPS were the same as the S5; average=1, min=1, max frame rate=5 running at 800×600.  Impressive that it even ran.  
• Speakers and standard audio jack: Like the S5, the S70 has stereo speakers that are very loud that sound better than they should given their size. I thought the S70 speakers sounded the fullest, but the S5 sounded louder. 
• USB Connectivity: 2 USB ports, one full size and one mini, virtually eliminate the need for a USB hub.  One for wireless keyboard and mouse and one for optical drive and I have a portable desktop.
• SDHC slot: The X70 comes with an SDHC slot for extra storage.  If you plan to do anything with video, you will need it, given the hard drive is only 32GB.  This is also convenient for transferring photos to the S70.
• Battery life:  Specs say 5.5 hours movie playback but I got more like 4 hours which is still good.  I got around 5 hours surfing the web with WiFi-”g”. 

Minuses

• User interface: Like the S5, more is not necessarily better.  The combination of the on-screen keyboard, jog dial, touch screen and buttons left me cold.  Even after over a month of attempting to get comfortable with it, I could not.  This doesn’t mean everyone will have this issue, but I certainly did.  In contrast, it took me about a week to get fully comfortable with the Apple Touch.
• Display: Like all the MIDs tested, the reflective surface and brightness didn’t make a very good experience outdoors or even in the car on a sunny day.  Defeats the purpose a bit of having such a super-portable PC.  
• WLAN: Like all the MIDs tested, the 802.11 b/g signal strength was noticably lower than my notebooks and netbooks.  Makes sense given they need lower power parts and there’s not a lot of room in the chassis to snake an antenna.  BUT, for a device that relies on the web for its experience, I needed better and I needed “n” as well.
• HD Video playback:  Just forget about the HD world with the X70.  Even with the “viliv player”, while I could run 720P and 1080P videos with reasonable bit rates at low CPU rates, they came with major stutters.  I am not talking about highly-encoded files.  These were files off of a Kodak Zi6, an Aiptek HD palmcorder, and test files we use internally.  Also, forget about running web HD and most HQ videos at YouTube.  CPU pegs at 100% and the experience turns into a slide show.  And, like all the MIDs I have looked at, dont even attempt to convert videos, use a real PC to do this.
• Heavy Web: Like all the MIDs I have tested, heavier, java-script laden sites with multiple Flash 10.x web sites really taxed the X70.  Sites like ESPN.com, Disney.com, Foxnews.com, Americanidol.com would spike the CPU, then when you either clicked to another part of the site, I noticed a real lag.  Also, watch how many tabs you have open.  Once I started opening up a lot of web tabs on Google Chrome, the system started to really bog down.
• Games: Very popular downloadable games like Disney’s Toontown loaded but played with extremely low and unplayable frame rates.  Wizard 101 required a physical mouse and keyboard and bogged down in fight scenes.  It goes without saying don’t even attempt to play modern gamer-games like an FPS on a MID.  It doesnt have the processing power, GPU or CPU or storage to do it well and they weren’t designed to be a game machine.
• GPS: I couldn’t locate any “free” directions software to use the GPS like I have on my Blackberry Bold with Google maps.  None came with the unit either.  The viliv website showed Google Earth, I loaded it, but couldn’t get it to work with GPS.  If you know of any solutions, please let me know and I will update this post.
• 32GB storage: As a larger-screen multimedia device, 32GB of storage doesn’t cut it for me.  I ran out of hard drive space within a month. If you must have the X70 and do anything with video, get the 128GB version of the unit.

Conclusion

My views of the X70 are very similar to the S5.  I am impressed with the build quality of the device and its 3G mobile capability to handle basic web, video and music and impressed with its connectivity to displays and USB peripherals.  I was dissapointed in its HD video playback, complex web page capability, and user interface. As a productivity device, I recommend connecting the system to a full size keyboard, mouse, and monitor.  To me, my Blackberry Bold makes a much better email device than using the on-screen display of the X70.  If rich web video or HD video is really important to you in a small form factor, I could never recommend the X70.  It just isn’t able to playback HD video in a reliable and high quality manner.  If you want even more information on the X70, you can find a full viliv X70 review at UMPC Portal from my friend Chippy.  Next up, I will look at the last MID, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet which as you will see is quite different from the other MIDs tested.  As always, please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President and Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

viliv S5

dominate the earth), and part 3 (where I take the extreme counterpoint view of why I believe that, in fact, PCs have no reason to worry about MIDs.) — certainly not even in the near- or even mid-term future.  In part 2 and 3 I obviously took an extremist’s view hoping that by turning up the contrast ratio, you got a better flavor for the debate. In parts four through seven I will start to drill down specifically on some of the different MIDs available on the market today.  In this blog I will specifically give my impressions on the viliv S5 Premium-S. I spent a few months using the device in different scenarios and will give my high-level plusses and minuses on the device.

Viliv S5 Premium-S Basic Specs

Plusses

• Durability: The S5 feels like a brick when you pick it up. Very dense and solid.
• Weight: Incredibly light, less than weight of two iPhones.
• Keyboard haptic feedback: If you can get comfortable with the keyboard and touch interface, you will appreciate the feedback you get when you touch the surface.
• Wake time: Fast resume from sleep (4 seconds), cold boot (40 seconds), and hibernation (27 seconds), particularly for Windows XP device.
• Display: Very bright for inside use and the reflective surface is good for videos.  Appears larger than the M1 display because without a keyboard, I can position closer to my face.  Also, because  the S5 is essentially a tablet, you can orient the display at any angle you choose.
• WWAN Option: HSPA was available but like a dummy, I didn’t order that model.  From using the viliv X70, I can tell you that this is a MUST-have feature for any MID.
• Basic Video: Like the M1, ran standard (non HQ/HD) YouTube and Hulu videos reasonably well, although CPU utilization was between 60-100%.
• Video out options: With the optional VGA or component out cables, I easily connected my S5 to a Benq monitor at 1900×1200 resolution!
  

  Viliv S5 connected to a USB hub connecting a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and DVD writer. Also connected to Benq display at 1,920x1200 via VGA adapter

• Basic Web: Like the M1, Handled lighter, non java-script laden and multiple unit Flash 10 web sites quite well.  Google, Wikipedia, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter ran just fine unless I ran HD videos on FaceBook.
• Productivity: Came with a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office and I connected to the AMD corporate network.  Was surprised how well Outlook ran.  Email, documents, presentations, light spreadsheets, no problem.  But given the 4.8″ screen, I can’t recommend any real big spreadsheet or presentation work, not even viewing, unless connected to a real monitor.
• Games: Flash games played with CPU between 80-100%.  Completed install and benchmark for World in Conflict.  The FPS were low,  average=1, min=1, max frame rate=5 running at 800×600 but amazed it actually ran.  The Lost Planet performance test installed but would not complete without blue-screening.  Wizard 101 played much better on the S5 than the M1, but bogged down in fight scenes.  The S5 isn’t designed to be a game machine.
• Speakers, physical volume rocker switch, and standard audio jack: Unlike the M1, the S5 has stereo speakers that are very loud that sound better than they should given their size.  Also, its nice to have physical volume “up” and “down” when playing music on such a small device.  Hitting the speaker icon on a 1024×600 4.8″ screen is not easy at my age!
• USB Connectivity: 2 USB ports, on full size and one mini virtually eliminate the need for a USB hub.  One for wireless keyboard and mouse and one for optical drive and I have a portable desktop.
• Battery life:  Specs say 6 hours movie playback but I got more like 4 hours.  This is still pretty good, especially considering I got around 5 hours surfing the web with WiFi-“g”.

Minuses

• User interface: More is not necessarily better.  The combination of the on-screen keyboard, jog dial, touch screen and buttons left me cold.  Even after over a month of attempting to get comfortable with it, I could not.  This doesn’t mean everyone will have this issue, but I certainly did.  In contrast, it took me about a week to get fully comfortable with the iPod Touch.
• Display: Like the M1, the reflective surface and brightness didn’t make a very good experience outdoors or even in the car on a sunny day.  Defeats the purpose a bit of having such a super-portable PC.
• Going into hibernation: Took 3:22 to go into hibernation, completely unacceptable.
• WLAN: Just like the M1, the 802.11 b/g signal strength was noticably lower than my notebooks and netbooks.  Makes sense given they need lower power parts and there’s not a lot of room in the chassis to snake an antenna.  BUT, for a device that relies on the web for its experience, I needed better and I needed “n” as well.
• Higher quality video: Unlike the M1, iPod format videos with Cyberlink 8 ran with CPU between 70-100%, 40% higher than the M1.  MPEG2 video at DVD movie rates ran well with CPU between 40-60%, 20% more than the M1.  I don’t fully understand why because I was using the same decode software (Cyberlink 8), same videos, and the hardware is basically the same under the hood. It may be “CODEC collission”, given the S5 came pre-loaded with the K-Lite Codec Pack. I finally tried using the built-in player, “viliv player”, and CPU rates lowered to more acceptable 20-30% for the MP4 AVC and MPEG2 files.  With the “viliv Player”, I could run 720P and 1080P videos at low CPU rates, but still with stutters, which I don’t fully understand. If anyone knows the “secret sauce” to make this work well, please let me know.  Also, forget about running web HD and most HQ videos at YouTube as they turn into a slide show.  And, like the M1, dont even attempt to convert videos, use a real PC to do this.
• Richer Web: Exactly like the M1, heavier, java-script laden sites with multiple Flash 10.x web sites really taxed the S5.  Sites like ESPN.com, Disney.com, Foxnews.com would spike the CPU, then when you either clicked to another part of the site, I noticed a real lag.  Also, watch how many tabs you have open.  Once I started opening up a lot of web tabs on Google Chrome, the system started to really bog down.
• Games: Very popular downloadable games like Disney’s Toontown loaded but played with extremely low and unplayable frame rates.  It goes without saying don’t even attempt to play modern gamer-games like an FPS on the S5.  It doesnt have the processing power, GPU or CPU or storage to do it well, but this isn’t designed to be a game machine.
• GPS: Couldn’t locate for the S5 any “free” directions software to use the GPS like I have on my Blackberry Bold with Google maps.  If you know of any, please let me know and I will update this post.
• Lack of SD memory slot: This seems like a required feature for any computing device, particularly one that comes with such a low amount of storage.

Conclusion

While I was impressed with the robustness, durability, portability and stability of the viliv S5, I was dissapointed in its video playback, complex web page capability, and user interface.  In my opinion, a device needs to do one thing exceptionally well and a whole lot of other things reasonably well.  As a productivity device, its main issue for me is the input mechanism, the on-screen keyboard and the jog dial.  Darn hard to write emails, the mainstay of productivity.  As a multimedia device, the video playback capabilities or the difficulty in figuring out how to playback decent video was an issue.  As a web surfing device, you need to ask, “what is the web today and what is it becoming”?  It is becoming high-res pictures, HD video and music, or simply, richer multimedia, and the S5 doesn’t shine exceptionally in those areas. The one place the S5 shines is connectivity to larger, higher resolution monitors and full-size keyboard and mouse for more of a desktop experience.  So if you do want to get some real work done or watch 480P videos, you can do that well. With the 3G option, social media activities like Facebook, Twitter (even Tweetdeck), Flickr, Friendfeed are quite good anywhere your 3G service is, except of course when you get into HD videos on Facebook, which appear to be getting more popular. If I had to choose between the 4.8″ UMID M1 or the viliv S5, I would need to go with the M1, but I sure would like that 3G option on the M1!  At $647.99, the S5 Premium-S is not an inexpensive proposition. For that investment, I could buy a 32GB iPod touch ($299) and a Gateway 11.6″ display netbook.  If you want even more information on the S5, you can find a full viliv S5 review at UMPC Portal from my friend Chippy.  As always, please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President and Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

This is part four in an eight part series where I look at emerging Mobile Internet Device (MID) technology and predict whether or not MIDs may displace netbooks and notebooks in the future.  Check out the introduction, and part 2 (where I take an extremist view on why I believe MIDs will dominate the earth), and part 3 (where I take the extreme view of why I believe that, in fact, PCs have no reason to worry about MIDs.) — certainly not even in the near- or even mid-term future.  In part 2 and 3 I obviously took an extremist’s view hoping that by turning up the contrast ratio, you got a better flavor for the debate.  In part four through seven I start to drill down specifically on some of the different MIDs available on the market today.  In this blog I will specifically specifically give my impressions on the UMID M1.  I spent a few months using the device in different scenarios and will briefly give my plusses and minuses on the device.

Basic Specs

L to R: UMID M1, Samsung NC10, HP DV2

Plusses

• Size: The smallest PC I have ever used, able to fit into a jacket pocket and even one of those small design purses or “man” purses, if that’s what you are into.
• Durability: Sturdy, durable-feeling design.  They keys felt even sturdier than on many of the 14 netbooks I have tried.
• Weight: Incredibly light, as light as one of those huge plastic accounting calculators you see around the office.
• Keyboard: Full QWERTY keyboard with keys that are about 3x size of a Blackberry Bold, dedicated number and direction keys.  Best attempt at small keyboard I have ever seen. Kudos to UMID.
• Wake time: Fast resume from hibernation (20 seconds), sleep (4 seconds), cold boot (42 seconds), particularly for Windows XP device.
• Display: Very bright for inside use.  Reflective surface good for videos.
  

  L to R: UMID M1 and G1

• Video: Ran standard (non HQ/HD) YouTube and Hulu videos reasonably well, although CPU utilization was between 60-100%.  iPOD format videos ran well with CPU between 30-60%.  MPEG2 video at DVD movie rates ran well with CPU between 20-40%.
• Web: Handled lighter, non java-script laden and multiple unit Flash 10 web sites quite well.  Google, Wikipedia, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter ran just fine unless on FaceBook I ran HD videos.
• Productivity: Documents, presentations, light spreadsheets, no problem.
• Games: Flash games played with CPU between 80-100%.  On the edge….. Actually completed install and benchmark for World in Conflict.  Sure, the average, min, max frame rate was 1 running 800×600, but this isn’t designed to be a game machine.
• USB Connectivity: Would connect an unpowered, USB DVD drive (HP) to watch DVDs and rip CDs.  I didn’t expect the USB port to have enough power, but it did.

Minuses

• Display: Reflective surface and brightness didn’t make a very good experience outdoors or even in the car on a sunny day.  Defeats the purpose a bit of having such a super-portable PC.  Additionally, the display didn’t tilt back enough for me to be sitting, typing, and see the display heads-on.  Finally, Windows XP on the compact display was very hard for me to see and click on the correct place on the screen with the pointer.  Maybe its just my old eyes.
• Hardware UI: Sometimes it was difficult trading off between the stylus and keyboard when interacting with the PC.  Thats the tradeoff you make with having a physical keyboard with no pointer.
• WWAN: HSPA option wasn’t available in the U.S. so no 3G for me.  I see it as an option in other parts of the world, but not here.
• WLAN: The 802.11 b/g signal strength was noticably lower than my notebooks and netbooks.  Makes sense given they need lower power parts and there’s not a lot of room in the chassis to snake an antenna.  BUT, for a device that relies on the web for its experience, I needed better and I needed “n” as well.
• Video: Forget about running web HD and most HQ videos at YouTube.  But then again, how much more of an experience do you get in HD on a 4.8″ machine?  I tried for months to purchase the video-out cable to allow me to connect to a larger and higher-res display to try it out but to no avail.  Perpetual back-order.  Also, embedded video at CNN.com and ESPN.com was quite choppy even when fully buffered.  Strange given that standard YouTube and Hulu worked.  I believe it is because at the same time videos were playing, ad units were playing at the same time.  Finally, dont even attempt to convert videos, use a real PC to do this.  It is painful on the M1, but it wasn’t intended to do this.  Finally, 720P and 1080P videos looked like a slide show, which was expected given the system’s specifications.
• Audio: Mono speakers delivered audio lower rate than my Blackberry Bold.  Proprietary jack for headphones so no plugging my favorite BOSE headphones into the unit.
• Web: Heavier, java-script laden sites with multiple Flash 10.x web sites really taxed the M1.  Sites like ESPN.com, Disney.com, Foxnews.com would spike the CPU, then when you either clicked to another part of the site, I noticed a real lag.  Also, watch how many tabs you have open.  Once I started opening up a lot of web tabs on Google Chrome, the system started to really bog down.
• Games: Very popular downloadable games like Wizard 101 and Disney’s Toontown loaded but played with extremely low frame rates.  It goes without saying don’t even attempt to play modern gamer-games like an FPS on the M1.  It doesnt have the processing power, GPU or CPU or storage to do it well, but this isn’t designed to be a game machine.
• Power brick: I was shocked at how large the power brick was.  It was almost twice the size of an Asus netbook brick.  For a small, portable PC, one would expect a smaller one as it takes up a lot of room in a bag.

Too Early to Tell

• Battery life:  Specs say 5 hours real use but I didnt get even close to that while actively using it on the internet.  I got more like 2.5 hours surfing the web.

Conclusion

I was very impressed with UMID’s ability to cram so much into such a small form factor and be able to do basic and even some mid-level applications. I can also accept the fact that it couldn’t do things that a real PC can do as it wasn’t designed to do those things.  BUT, going into the purchase, you MUST assume this is a second PC.  With the pervasiveness of higher resolution video, the increase of photo file size, and the increasing popularity of even sophisticated web games you must have a second PC to pair up with the UMID M1.  The biggest dissapointment for me was the lack of HSPA/3G, low 802.11b/g signal strength, and lack of 802.11n.  What’s the point of a super-portable device that relies on the internet and the cloud without having the best communication technologies?  In addition, I would like to see two changes that would greatly increase utility: 1) Add a mini-mouse or “nub” (think ThinkPad) so you dont have to switch between stylus and keyboard.  2) Create an interface to compensate for the small screen and Windows OS.  Yes, that’s like asking for the earth, but for me, the icons were so small, my hit rate was about 50% and I could barely read text on the screen- and I am near-sighted! If you want even more information on the M1, you can find a full UMID M1 review at UMPC Portal from my friend Chippy.  As always, please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President and Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Here in part 3, I take the extreme view of why I believe that, in fact, PCs have no reason to worry about MIDs — certainly not even in the near- or even mid-term future.  As with part 2, I am obviously taking an extremist’s view hoping that by turning up the contrast ratio, you will get a better flavor for the debate.

Getting into extremist character again…

My logic is simple yet sound and many points support this view:

PC applications have never remained static and always change and grow to solve emerging end user pain points, or evolve to create new pleasure points. For example, digital photography spawned PC photo viewers which spawned photo editing which spawned photo management applications that can now recognize and match faces. There are powerful leaps of innovation still ahead for the PC platform in how it provides a lot more visual, serial and parallel processing power and capability than a MID offers. Imagine what the future holds.

All that data like video and pictures being created locally forces a local computing model, where the compute engine must be close to the data. This certainly contradicts the “mobile cloud” theory discussed in part 2. Mobile access to the cloud would also require a lot more speed, less latency, and more reliability before we “cut the cord” to the cloud. The wireless industry isn’t even close. I still can’t even drive into work without the risk of losing my call. A more straight-forward argument for notebooks relates to the docking capability and cost. Compared to a 17” notebook, to dock the Viliv EX X70, it would cost me an extra $469 or 64% more – see below where I go through the details. Finally, if a user is looking for a mobile device to do some light computing, isn’t a smartphone a better choice than a MID?  The top applications for smartphones are already available and lots of choices exist.

Here is the data to back up these points:

Future of Applications

Compared to a modern notebook, today’s MIDs have a comparatively difficult time:

• playing the popular HD web video found on sites like Hulu and YouTube,
• converting video to be played on devices like an iPhone,
• playing popular web games Wizard 101 and Disney’s Toontown,
• matching your family’s faces on Picasa 3.6,
• basic multitasking

And applications won’t stop where they are today, given the end user pain points and desired pleasure points yet to be delivered.  I believe that PC application innovation will die down ONLY when:

• Render and recode buttons disappear from video and photo apps
• Computers can be controlled in Minority Report fashion
• Skype video is full-size, “eyeball resolution” and holographic.  The Holodeck.
• I can get access to ALL my content from ANY device (including set-top box and game console) wherever I am,  without a single hiccup
• Users can’t distinguish between games and real life
• Video and photo resolution and data complexity STOP growing.  Everything stops at 3D 1080P.

Seeing the industry is a long way off from delivering these in the next year’s PC, I think the PC has strong legs under it still. J

Data Location Drives the Compute Model

The location of the data dictates where the computing is done and there is a simple explanation why.  If the data is far from the computing, everything slows down because your compute engine is sitting around waiting for the data.  Your “bridge” or “bus” between the data and compute engine must be fast enough to transfer all that data back and forth. That’s where the theory of mobile access to the cloud starts to break down. If the mobile cloud is doing all the computing, then the bridge between it and where the data is being generated must be real fast. How fast is your 3G these days? Are you sending lots of hours of 1080P video into the cloud at blazing speeds?  Of course not.  I just hope that I can get a quick response from a web page on my Blackberry.  So what is the future of WWAN?

WWAN Transitions Take Around Seven Years

According to internal AMD WWAN research, it typically takes approximately 5-7 years for a full WWAN infrastructure transition.  That makes sense when you think about how long it took/taking CDMA, EDGE, HSPA, WiMax, and LTE to get broadly deployed.  And of course you need infrastructure to drive adoption, right? If you are thinking that heavy data sets like 1080P video will be quickly and reliably transferred to the cloud wirelessly with limited latency anytime soon at “blazing speeds”, think again.  Research suggests that even LTE doesn’t start really its hockey-stick growth until 2014.

How Reliable is the Mobile Cloud?

The final thought on WWAN is reliability.  I think the U.S. Verizon commercial “Can You Hear Me Know” sums it all up.  Those commercial started in 2002!  Here we are in late 2009 with dropped 3G calls in “supported” areas.  Remember how freaked out everyone became when just Gmail went down for 2 hours?  How can we possibly solely rely on the cloud for our precious photos, videos, and music without local backup?  My MIDs came with a whopping 32GB of storage.  That equates to about one, two hour HD video or 8 DVD movies.   The HP notebook described below came with 500GB.

Docking Capability with MID at $469/64% More Cost

If a user wanted to have a more comfortable “sit-down” experience in a fixed place, let’s say at a desk, it is an expensive proposition with a MID versus a notebook.   I chose the HP dv7 notebook with a 17.3” display, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive, Blu-ray drive, Windows 7, dual core AMD processor at 2.4 GHz, and ATI Mobility Radeon™ 4200 graphics at $729.  Compare that to the $879 for the Viliv X70 EX/3G (I paid) and the VGA and “TV” cables were an additional $20 each.  Add a Belkin 7 port USB-2 hub for $35, an external Sony USB-2 DVD drive for $65, wireless Microsoft keyboard and mouse for $70, Viewsonic 17” monitor for $129, and your “docked” total becomes $1,198.

In the particular example, the user pays $469 or 64% MORE for the docked MID versus a notebook. Don’t forget that the notebook has a “PC-grade” dual core CPU, incredibly more powerful graphics, Blu-ray versus DVD, 468GB more storage, and 3GB more RAM, and Windows 7 versus Windows XP.

Smartphones a Better Mobile Choice than MIDs

If a user is looking for mobility with some limited compute capability, I believe smartphones are the better choice versus a MID.  Smartphones can actually fit into your pocket, you can use them with one hand, not two, and they allow you to carry only one device, not two (a MID and phone).  On my Blackberry Bold, I can get my email, calendar items, and notes off the Exchange server in near real-time.  I can view and edit Microsoft attachments with “Word To Go”, “Sheet to Go”, and “Slideshow to Go”.  I can read PDF files, too.   I have Google Maps with GPS, FaceBook and Twitter via SocialScope, streaming music via Slacker, and chat with Google Talk.  Since my Apple iTouch was stolen, I have been using the Bold for my primary mobile music device and been quite happy.  In fact, to my ear the music fidelity is better than any of the MIDs I used.  Finally, if you MUST have Microsoft software capability, you can always choose a smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.5.  And of course, there are some cool features on the Android phones and the iPhone.

Net-net, I predict the notebook PC doesn’t have to worry about the MID for a long, long time.  Applications exist today that a MID cannot run well, so just imagine how poorly future applications will run.  Those future applications will take a lot of processing power and if you are banking on mobile access to the cloud, I propose you think again.  I doubt the mobile cloud will have enough speed, low enough latency or the reliability required for the next generation of apps and their ever-expanding data sets.  Also, MIDs may be able to provide a docking experience today but it’s extremely expensive and clunky with a lot of cables when compared to a notebook.  Finally, if you want a convenient mobile experience and do a little computing, get a smartphone, I maintain it’s a better choice than a MID.

Of course this is the extremist’s view, but like part 2, hopefully you get a flavor of the debate points and have an opinion now on MIDs and notebooks.

Up next, I look at the UMID M1, a small MID with a full QWERTY keyboard, 4.8” screen, and weighs .69 lbs, which Dynamism boasts as “the world’s smallest PC”. Have comments or questions, let me know.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President and Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Per my usual comments, this is not intended to be an official review of the device, but more of an overview of the platform and features offered, mixed with a little user feedback.  

Specs
As you may remember from last time, Dell is offering the Inspiron Zino HD PC with multiple configurable options so customers have the ability to personalize the platform to a specific need or budget.  The original unit sent to me was configured with the following specifications:

However, I managed to get my hands on the AMD Athlon™ Neo X2 6850e processor so I was able to swap out the processor and do additional testing. Furthermore, I was offered a chance to swap out my original system for one with the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330 GPU and a Blu-ray drive and so as you can imagine, I jumped at the chance. 

Once again, none of my testing was done under rigorous lab conditions, running benchmarks with repeated and averaged test results, nor am I showing pretty graphs and charts. I was more concerned with the testing and observation of this system in a real world environment (See the User Experience section below for more details).  While neither unit is intended to be a high performance gaming system, I was quite surprised by the gaming capabilities of the version with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 GPU.

User Experience
My initial goal was to test the computer as a small form factor HTPC.  As noted last time, it did very well under most conditions.  While I was unable to test every scenario before I swapped out units, I did test a lot of different playback material including online media (like Hulu, Youtube, etc.), DVD playback, music and streaming content over a local area network. The device did most things very well.  However, I received some questions from readers asking how the AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e processor would add to the experience. You asked, I answer.

Playing Content
The first unit was configured with the AMD Athlon™ X2 3250e processor.  This is a dual-core microprocessor with a clock frequency of 1.5 GHz.  Overall, this was a great configuration for the Inspiron Zino HD.  It was able to handle playback of most of the source content I tried without any issues.  The only source content that seemed to have a slight jitter was The Legend of the Seeker 720p HD content on Hulu’s website.  However, once I enabled hardware acceleration via Adobe’s 10.1 beta release and the ATI Catalyst™ Control Center 9.11 drivers (more on this below), this clip was noticeably smoother. 

Yet when I updated the processor to the AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e processor (dual-core processor at 1.8 GHz), it was able to run that same 720p clip without hardware acceleration, though hardware acceleration did lower the CPU load. In addition to being able to playback this 720p flash content, media center also felt more responsive when navigating menus and scrolling through screens.  Therefore, the overall experience was improved with the faster processor installed.

Flash Acceleration
At the time of the first blog, Adobe had not yet released their Flash player that enabled hardware acceleration.  However, that changed last week with their beta release of their Flash 10.1 player.  In support of that release, AMD released the 9.11 driver that works in conjunction with the 10.1 Flash player to enable GPU hardware acceleration on some Flash video content.  As such, I wanted to take some time to test this out and provide a little information for you. 

The Inspiron Zino HD tested was configured with the AMD Athlon™ Neo X2 6850e processor, AMD RS780G chipset, and Windows® 7 64-bit connected to a Westinghouse 42” 1080p monitor set to native 1080p resolution.  The tables below show the CPU load and the UVD engine status, where busy reflects that the hardware acceleration is working.

Content: Legend of the Seeker 720p pilot episode in pop out window mode, maximized on 1080p 42” Westinghouse monitor set to native resolution.

Content: The Office (Murder episode) in pop out window mode, maximized on 1080p 42” Westinghouse monitor set to native resolution.

Content: Castle (Love Me Dead episode) in pop out window mode, maximized on 1080p 42” Westinghouse monitor set to native resolution.

As you can see, with the appropriate drivers and the beta Flash player, the Inspiron Zino HD can really take advantage of hardware acceleration making playback of online flash content a very positive experience.  I did find that by maximizing the pop out window and closing the original Hulu window, content playback was all around better.  Now, your mileage may vary, but this should give you an idea of what you might experience on this little system.

Audio
Another reader question that was asked was about the audio capabilities of the Inspiron Zino HD with multichannel content over HDMI.  I was able to test the multichannel capabilities of the system by connecting it to a Yamaha RXV661 receiver.  After playing several DVDs with multichannel encoded content (Dolby Digital, DTS), 5.1 audio really made the movies explode off the screen.  The system passed the Dolby Digital encoded source to the Yamaha for decoding and playback.  Audio was clear with all five channels working correctly.   The receiver supported two modes of operation: Straight (Dolby Digital decode only) and Pure Direct (Dolby Digital Decode and Yamaha DSP processing).  Both sounded very nice, but the Pure Direct mode seemed to have more punch to it with a warmer  sound.  However, those are really a function of the receiver and not the Dell hardware.

Before I could get more testing completed, I was given the opportunity to trade out the original configuration for one with the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330 GPU and a Blu-ray drive.  The rest of the configuration was the same as the previous unit (AMD Athlon™ X2 3250e processor, 2GB RAM, etc.).

I did not bother to go back and re-run all the testing and content that I did with the first unit because if the integrated graphics solution can handle the work load, I think it is safe to say that the higher performing discrete solution can also handle the work load.

Blu-ray Playback
Now that I had a version with the discrete graphics card and a Blu-ray optical drive, I wanted to take it for a test spin.  By default, the unit had Cyberlink’s Power DVD pre loaded so I could playback Blu-ray movies.  Playback was smooth without any frame drops.  Again, thanks to AMD’s UVD technology, CPU load remained low ranging from 20% – 30% during playback.  

Game Play
One of the big advantages of the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330 GPU is its ability to play 3D games at some very respectable resolution settings with a fair amount of the “eye candy” turned on.  Now, I could spend an entire blog post on Zino HD game play and the impact of different settings, however, I just want to give you a general overview of performance and what you might expect. 

Command & Conquer 3, Tiberium Wars was the first game I loaded on the system.  I was able to play the game at the max resolution of my Westinghouse panel (1920 x 1080). Game playback at that resolution with the video settings maxed out was playable, but character movement and unit build time was a little sluggish.  However, when I backed down the resolution to 720p and a few of the video enhancement settings, game playback was very smooth and images crisp.   

Next, I loaded Sims 3 so my wife could enjoy a little game time on the Zino HD.  Once again, playback was smooth and images crisp.  My wife did feel that the images were a little too small for her at the higher resolutions and wanted to lower the resolution; however, I had her play a while at the higher setting just to confirm the capabilities of the system.

The only first person shooter I had on hand was Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault — not the most up to date FPS, but it should still give an idea of relative performance.  Once again, I was able to max out both the available resolution (1600 x 1024) and the video enhancement settings and still enjoy smooth game play.  The game did feel just a little more responsive at 1280 x 720, but either resolution was very playable. 

I must admit, it was a little strange playing a PC game on a 42” LCD TV. While not the most advanced gaming rig, it was a capable gaming box at pretty good resolutions with mid to high level video enhancements turned on. Overall, it felt like 720p was the sweet spot for the games I played. If you are a console gamer, then purchasing some console game controls to use with your Inspiron Zino HD could be just the ticket.  Do note that I used the AMD Athlon™ X2 3250e processor during gaming.  If you think you will be doing some gaming with the system, then upgrading to the faster AMD Athlon Neo X2 6850e processor might be advisable just to get a little more punch from the system.

Dual Screen
For kicks, I decided to try connecting up two screens to the system to see how it would handle.  I ran HDMI to the 42” Westinghouse panel and then VGA to a 17” NEC LCD monitor.  The system was able to drive both screens at the 1080p resolution.  I then opened up Windows Media Center on the large screen and started playing back a Blu-ray disc while opening up a web browser on the NEC monitor with Hulu content. Both content sources played back smoothly, without any noticeable issues.  Of course, both audio sources were playing back so it was a little confusing to watch, but it was fun to try out.  Note, at first, I did not get audio working over HDMI, but after disabling the analog audio outputs and rebooting, audio over HDMI did start working.

Power Draw
Once again, I connected the HTPC to a Kill-A-Watt meter to see test the power draw.  As expected, the power draw did vary based upon different use cases (Blu-ray, streaming internet content, gaming, etc.).  At idle (staring at the desktop), the system was using about 36-38W.  During Blu–ray playback, power was about 47-51W while DVD playback was about 46W.  Streamed content from Hulu (via Hulu DT) the power draw was about 45-50W.  Lastly, when I was playing games, power draw was about 54W.

Noise Level
Even with the discrete graphics solution included, like before, the unit remained very quiet.  In most cases, I needed to put my ear within a few inches of the PC to hear it.  Loading games, the noise levels from the optical drive were noticeable, but this is true of most systems.  However, during DVD and Blu-ray playback, the unit remained very quiet.  I would estimate that it was on par or perhaps just slightly louder than the original unit I tested, but again it was a very, very quiet system. I would comfortably say that Dell did an excellent job of keeping this PC almost silent.

Recommended Configurations/Options
One question that was repeatedly asked was what configuration I would recommend.  This is tough to answer because both boxes did things very well.  It really depends on what you plan on using it for and what level of performance you might need to accomplish your tasks.

Based upon my testing, I would suggest going with one of the dual-core processors as they seem to offer the best performance for the money.  There are many applications today that are multithreaded and those can take advantage of a multi core CPU.  It is hard not to suggest upgrading to the AMD Athlon™ Neo X2 6850e processor because it did make the system feel more responsive. However, I was really pleased with the performance of the AMD Athlon X2 3250e processor because it did handle everything pretty well.

As for opting for the discrete graphics upgrade? If you plan on doing any 3D gaming or GPU intensive tasks, then this is a worthwhile upgrade.  The integrated graphics technology of the RS780G chipset can certainly do some gaming, but the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330 GPU does provide a much more satisfactory gaming experience.  Furthermore, if you think you might want to upgrade graphics at any point on this system, you should really just do this when ordering.  I don’t think the integrated graphics version has the necessary MXM slot to upgrade later.  I believe this is only available on the unit with the discrete graphics card when you originally place your order.  Lastly, the discrete option supports 7.1 audio (though not Dolby True HD or DTS Master), while the integrated graphics version supports 5.1 audio only.

One other point I would like to mention is the wireless networking support.  After speaking with an AMD colleague, he pointed out that the optional wireless N support is actually a dual band wireless card.  Dell seems to be offering this upgrade option at a very competitive price point.  If you think you will want to add wireless support to your unit at anytime, you may want to consider doing that one up front because it does seem like a very good deal. 

After testing both models now, I feel confident in saying that either of these Dell Inspiron Zino HD units make for a very nice PC that would equally be at home serving as an HTPC or a mainstream PC.   

Again, there is so much more I would have like to have covered but I have taken enough of your time.  These are some great little boxes that provide an excellent PC or HTPC experience.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a note and I will try to respond. 

Till next time, Happy Trails!

Jay Taylor is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

So, you’ve got this fancy new HTPC, but how do you use it?  Well, I thought we would take a look at the various options for controlling your HTPC.  I am splitting this post into a two part series covering both keyboard and mice solutions in the first post while wand style remotes will be featured in the second post.  Like previous posts on technology, products covered are limited to what I had immediately available — not intended to cover all the different options out there. Likewise, this is not intended to be a review of all the different solutions, just an introduction to a few available products. 

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a few of these different solutions for testing thanks to our technology partners.  As such, I brought these devices home for a brief period so I could see how my family liked them. I know, I said I should never use my family as beta testers, but this seemed a little different and I felt it would be more useful to provide their feedback in addition to mine to provide a wider cross section of user experiences. More about their responses later on.

Keyboards and mice come in many different flavors; some are clearly aimed at the desk environment with their cables running to the back of your PC (aka the 2 foot experience).  They provide little value in a living room setting while you are sitting on the couch.  However, with the advent of wireless keyboards, you  are no longer tethered to your PC. 

The ultimate goal of the HTPC for me is that I would never have need of a keyboard or mouse and that I could do everything with a remote in hand.  As covered in the “What Can an HTPC Do?” series (part 1 and part 2), I showed you a lot of what you can do with just a remote in hand.  However, as mentioned, the HTPC is also a fully functional PC and therefore, the addition of a keyboard and mouse opens it up to just about all the things you could do on a traditional PC.  Now, I don’t do my “PC” type activities on my HTPC, but there are a lot of different video websites that I routinely visit for TV content.  Having a keyboard and mouse for searching content on those sites can be useful.  So, let’s discuss some of the technologies and the options available for your HTPC.
 
Technology
First, it is important to understand there are various cordless keyboard technologies on the market.  Some may be infrared (IR) based solutions, while others may be radio frequency (RF) or Bluetooth® (BT) based technologies.  The difference can impact cost, reliability, line of sight, distance, and other factors.  IR solutions are typically the cheapest solutions to implement and work in much the same way as a traditional remote control might work.  Typically, they will have good range but would require direct line of sight to the sensor in order to send the keystrokes (your typing) to your HTPC.  RF on the other hand is usually more common and uses radio waves to send those keystroke.  These can vary in range from 3 feet to 10-15 feet or more but can be impacted by interference from other devices in the home (cordless phones, etc.) or home construction (metals used in the walls, venting, stairway rails, etc). BT keyboards are usually the most expensive solutions, but typically have the longest range and can work well at distances up to 30 feet. 

Some HTPC keyboards integrate cursor control via a mouse pad (like those on laptops), a track ball or other forms into the keyboard design, while others bundle separate mice in the package. Now, I personally feel that the integrated solution is a really nice feature that eliminates the need for a separate mouse.  However, these may not be ideal if you are trying to game on an HTPC.  Integrated cursor control may not have the precision movement or ease of control offered by a separate mouse and therefore may not work as well in a gaming environment. 

Another common feature found in HTPC style keyboards is a rechargeable battery.  This is another nice touch because like any device, these can go through batteries quite often.  Having a recharging deck can save the consumer the hassle of changing batteries and can also be more convenient.  Not all wireless keyboards offer recharging stations so be sure to check the package before making your purchase if that is important to you.

Some vendors will include software applications and drivers with their keyboards.  Some of these applications can be useful for media playback, programming hotkeys, etc.  These may also automatically check for version updates for you, but this can also happen at less than ideal times.  However, you often have control over when these updates should or should not take place.  So, let’s look at a few different solutions (in no particular order). 

Keyboards for HTPC
One of the first RF keyboards I tried was the nMedia PC RF keyboard and remote combo package.   

This is a full size keyboard operating on a 2.4Ghz RF band.  It has an integrated trackball on the right hand side with your left and right click buttons on the left side.  Along the top edge are Internet hot keys and multimedia hot keys for quick access to common functions.  The keyboard has a very nice tactile feel without being loud as you type.  The overall shape has a very comfortable feel in your hands.  Using the trackball can take a little practice, especially if you are more familiar using a full size mouse in a desktop environment.  There is an option to bundle the keyboard with a remote as well (to be discussed in part 2 of this post).  This option can be a great, cost effective solution for those on a tight budget.

Another interesting set of solutions comes from Microsoft. Microsoft has numerous wireless keyboards on the market, but they have some that specifically target Media Center type applications.

The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 is another full size keyboard solution that integrates cursor control along with numerous other functions into the keyboard design. It is a popular choice among many HTPC enthusiasts. It uses BT technology so the range is very good.  It is very thin and light and has a rechargeable battery for ease of use. It too is comfortable and quiet when typing. The many built-in hot keys bring a lot of functionality to the finger tips with a single button press.  It comes bundled with a cordless mouse as well giving you a couple of options for controlling the cursor.  Although more expensive than the nMedia solution mentioned above, it is quite a bit less costly than some of the higher end units on the market while delivering a great mid range solution.  While I did not have one of these to test, I have seen it in several stores and found it a very compelling solution. 

Logitech has some great products as well, two of which are nice keyboard solutions for HTPC users.  The Logitech diNovo Edge^TM and the Logitech diNovo Mini^TM are keyboard and mice solutions that provide two very different user experiences.  Like the Microsoft solution above, the Logitech solutions listed leverage BT technology for great range.    

The diNovo Edge^TM is a full size keyboard and mouse solution for the HTPC.  It has back lit keys, integrated mouse pad, touch based volume slider all in a very slim, rechargeable design.  This is probably one of the more sexy solutions I have seen in keyboards for the HTPC space.  The elegant design is both aesthetically pleasing and very functional.  The hot keys make for quick access to commonly used functions.  The battery seems to last a long time on a single charge, but this depends on how often it is used so mileage may vary, so to speak. When not in use, the recharging station also makes for a convenient stand for storage. This falls into the mid to high end type price point, but you can often find it on sale online.  

The diNovo Mini^TM is a much smaller solution that uses a thumb style QWERTY keyboard and also includes a mouse touch pad.  It comes with a charger and it has pretty good life out of a single charge.  One particularly nice feature included in the diNovo Mini is a switch that converts the touch pad into an up/down/left/right select navigation control (like those found on traditional wand style remotes).  This is pretty handy for having one solution that can navigate Windows® Media Center similar to a wand remote as well as operate as a keyboard and mouse solution for general PC duties. It has media control keys along the top for easy playback of your favorite media content along with channel up/down for TV control (assuming you have a TV Tuner in your HTPC).  It also has back lit keys so you can easily find the letters in low light situations.

User Experience
It is difficult to write in depth about the full user experience and functionality of all these keyboards in a single post so I will be brief.  Each one of these products could easily deserve its own post, therefore, I would suggest that you read some in depth reviews and go to the product pages to get a list of the full functionality offered by each of these products as well as to learn what other solutions are out there that might best meet your needs.

User experiences of these solutions differ from one unit to the next and also from one person to the next.  Full size keyboards are easy to adapt to since most people use them daily with their PCs.  Both my wife and I found the larger keyboards very easy to use and comfortable.  Even my kids liked the full size keyboards.  I personally liked all of them, but found the touch pads a little easier to use since it was the same technology used on my laptop.  However, full size keyboards can take up a lot of space on coffee tables or entertainment shelves in your living room and don’t always fit the decor.  

If you are space constricted, the smaller micro size keyboards or the thumb style like the diNovo Mini might be better suited.  While I like the diNovo Mini a lot (its small size while being fully functional was great), I am just not as adept at the thumb style keyboard as my wife and kids.  My daughter is a texting queen and her lightening fast fingers are a blur as she texts people on her phone.  As such, she was able to quickly adapt to the smaller diNovo mini.  She did mention that the keyboard is bigger than that of her phone, but it did not appear to throw her off at all.  Heck, based upon some of her comments, I have to keep an eye on it just to make sure my daughter does not hijack it for her room.

Therefore, if you are comfortable and quick with texting on phones, the thumb style solutions like the diNovo Mini might make for a great solution for you.  However, if you tend to fumble those smaller keyboards like me (I too often send out garbled messages or take forever just to send a two word response), a full size keyboard might be the answer for you.  I only covered a small amount of solutions on the market; there are a lot of options out there to meet the needs of the consumers. 

Next time, we will look at a few of the wand style remote controls to give you an idea of what is available on the market today.  Stay tuned.  If you have some feedback about this blog or have some info you would like to share on your favorite HTPC keyboard solution, please feel free to leave a comment.

Till next time, Happy Trails!

Jay Taylor is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

By now you may have already heard some of the exciting news for the HTPC space over the last few weeks. However, in case you had not, let’s spend a little time talking about it here.

Last week Hulu announced a desktop application that allows you to use a standard Media Center type remote to navigate and view content on Hulu’s website. Now, instead of the traditional mouse and keyboard interface in a two-foot environment to navigate the Hulu website (think watching Hulu at your desk on a computer monitor), you can now launch this desktop application while using your Windows® Media Center Edition remote  in a 10-foot environment (think watching Hulu from your couch on your big HD screen). Adding this so called “Lean Back” interface technology is a big step for Hulu in making it easier for consumers to access and watch content in a much more user friendly environment. This experience can even be integrated into Windows Media Center Edition by using something like the MCE Menu Mender application so you can launch the Hulu application from inside Media Center Edition instead of the desktop.

Earlier this week, YouTube announced YouTubeXL. This is another 10 foot UI for YouTube content. While Hulu chose to release an application enabling the 10 foot experience, YouTube chose to launch a website that provides the 10 foot navigation.  In either case, this is great news for consumers that want to enjoy content from their couch instead of sitting and staring at a desktop or laptop computer screen.

But it does not end with Hulu and YouTube. A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced that they have teamed up with Netflix to support integration of Netflix functionality into the Windows Vista® Media Center application. While you could always do this via a 3rd Plug In application, what makes this interesting is that Microsoft recognizes the need for easy access to more content and is taking steps to make that happen.  Now, Microsoft has not yet (at the time of this posting) integrated Netflix functionality into the upcoming Windows® 7 platform.  I can’t speak for Microsoft here, but I would expect them to offer this in Windows 7 as well given that they just launched it in Windows Vista.

These are exciting times.  The role of PC technology in the home is constantly changing for the better.  As content owners and distributors integrate more 10-foot user interface (aka Lean Back) technology into their distribution model and as Microsoft further integrates those things into their Media Center application, the usage model and viability of the HTPC type platform increases.  The industry is rapidly changing, bringing more content to the consumer in ever easier ways to navigate and enjoy that content.

So, tell us what you think about these industry changes.  Are you taking advantage of all the content out there? Are you finding it easier to access this content? What do these changes mean to you? Du Yu Hulu?     

Till next time, Happy Trails!

Jay Taylor is a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJC9jLClHg

One of the things that has become very apparent to me over the last year is that my TV viewing habits have completely changed.  In the past, I would either watch TV shows live or DVR them and watch them later that same day or night.  Lately I have found that my wife and I often catch up with our favorite TV shows (Lost, Heroes, The Office, Lie To Me, and 24) on the weekend, when life slows down a bit.  We will either watch them on the DVR in our media room, or we will watch them using Hulu on our Bedroom TV (using a PC).   Occasionally we will even use our Slingbox to stream the shows from our media room to the PC in the bedroom.

Recently however, my bedroom PC has started to show its age, and has become a bit unreliable.  I decided one easy way for me to test out the DV2, was to hook it right to my TV and see what happened. 

I had a DV2 at the house anyway, since I was using one for AMD Fusion Media Explorer testing.  With the DV2’s nice and convenient HDMI port I figured this would be a snap.  I proceeded to run an HDMI cable between my Visio 37” LCD, and the DV2.  Within less than 5 minutes I was up and running.  While I was able to use the DV2’s integrated keyboard and mouse for navigation, I found myself missing the convenience of a wireless keyboard and mouse.  I hooked up my Gyration mouse, and it automatically loaded the driver and I was in business less than a minute later.

In addition to being able to stream content from my favorite TV sites (Hulu, Fancast, Veoh, TV.com, nbc.com, abc.com, etc.),  I was also able to watch my collection of archived movies, and TV shows, as well as Blu-Ray and DVD movies.  I like to save my movies and TV shows in either WMV or DiVX file formats.  Unfortunately, most CE devices won’t play either of these formats.  The nice thing about a PC, like the DV2, is support is only a codec install away.

Another feature I put to quick use, is the Sling Media Player, which comes preinstalled on the DV2.  I have only 1 cable box in my house, (and hoping to get to none when my Time Warner contract runs out), so I use a SlingBox to get premium content from that box to the rest of the house.  I have my DVR setup to automatically record many of the shows listed earlier in the post.  As soon as I clicked on the Sling icon, it found my SlingBox, and after entering my password, I was watching TV in seconds.  It was a very intuitive and seamless experience.

As for the video quality in each of these uses cases are concerned, here if what I found:

Blu-Ray – Excellent.  Looked about as good as my PS3

DiVX/WMV – Very Good.  While not as stunning as Blu-Ray, I was more than happy with the playback

Slingbox – Very Good.  It was as good as I had seen it on any other PC I have tried it on.

Youtube/Hulu – Good.  Youtube playback can only be as good as the content.  The DV2 seemed to play it as well as any other PC I have tried.  As for Hulu, my experience was mixed.  The visual quality was very good, but I did notice an occasional stutter.  My wife didn’t notice it though, so maybe I am just ultra picky.  It was still watchable, but wasn’t quite as smooth as it was on my quad-core “Dragon” platform system.

AMD Fusion Media Explorer – Good. Installing Fusion Media Explorer on the system was really the highlight of the experience for me.  Now I was able to surf the web while I watched TV or movies.  That is what I call “getting it done.”  Give me a 6 pack of Diet Coke and I am good for hours. 

I also really enjoyed the photo, music, and video experiences.  I found it very easy to navigate and find what I was looking for.  The performance of the ribbon isn’t as smooth as it is on higher end systems, but it was still quite usable.  I loved clicking on a song, and having it present music videos to me from Youtube.  I wasted about an hour just doing that. 

All said and done, I was really happy with my experience using the DV2 as a mobile media center.  The other nice thing is I can take it in the car and hand it to the kids in the back seat, and now they are good for hours.  As a standard notebook, the DV2 is great; but I really fell in love with this notebook’s better than expected multimedia capabilities.

Casey Gotcher is Director, Product Marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

In my personal life I consume media in many ways. My primary tool is my AMD LIVE! Media Center PC with Microsoft Vista Home Premium. It is in my bedroom and very integrated into my routine, and I use it heavily. In the morning I watch The Today Show while I get ready for work. When I get home from work I catch up on shows I missed that are pre-recorded. At night my wife and I watch Family Guy as we wind down and head to bed. When we go to parties and take pictures, the first thing I do when we get home is stick the camera’s SD card into the Media Center and copy the photos to the hard drive.

There are several areas that still need improvement. It is still a computer, so a wireless keyboard and mouse is a must. While the integration needs a lot of work, I do love being able to stream video from Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube onto a large screen TV.

Being able to use all the online streaming services without special support is great. Upgradability is also a plus. With all the HD content I’ve been recording, I had to upgrade the hard drive twice. There are still several more ways I plan on using my Media Center. In the near future I want to get either a Pica extender or a Microsoft Xbox 360 to view my content outside of the bedroom. I also want to get a SideShow device to have a more interactive experience with my computer.

I feel like I live two years in the future, because I am not a typical user. But I’m sure in two years everyone will have a computer hooked up to their TV. It might not be in the same form and I’m hopeful the setup will be more polished. I know I didn’t include Blu-ray in my setup, but once again that ties back to the great upgradability of a PC platform. PCs are the best kept secret in home entertainment.

1. THIS UTILITY MAY DISABLE SECURITY / ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, OR ADVERSELY AFFECT YOUR SYSTEM. REVIEW ACCOMPANYING DOCUMENTATION CAREFULLY BEFORE INSTALLING.

Wesley Faulkner

Wesley Faulkner is a Product Development Engineer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.