My much-loved Pinnacle Showcenter (written about previously here, for example) finally packed up. Not sure what killed it – did the obligatory open-it-up-and-buzz-it-a-bit routine. PSU seemed OK, but when the main board was connected up, something was dragging the PSU down big-time. No obviously failed components, so you are left with the likelihood that some chip somewhere has gone bad in a big way. So after shedding a tear, one quickly cheers up and realises that it’s a perfect excuse to replace it with something new!
Not self-build?
I wanted a device with similar functionality, to play my large collection of videos stored on a server and also allow occasional photo browsing. I didn’t have many hard and fast requirements, but as far as they went they were:
- support a wide range of media formats, particularly DivX variants and MKV hi-def.
- support a wide range of output (today we still have a large but rather old normal-def TV – I am sure in the lifetime of a new device our TV will get replaced with something HDMI-ish)
- smart networking: my house is a mixture of Ethernet-over-power and wi-fi, with little cabled Ethernet)
- Open. Very important. No proprietary crap, either in terms of what it can play or what I am allowed to do with it.
Given this and my propensity for building my own kit, a self-build seemed like an obvious idea. I toyed with the obvious mini-ITX options, with appropriately funky video cards and one of the Linux TV-based distros. But when I did a rough calculation of both the cost and the work required I couldn’t help but check if there was anything ready-built which would also do the job. I didn’t expect to find anything, to be honest. It was almost a “Due Diligence” exercise which I had to perform so that when I then spent day after day getting my self-build working OK I could mentally justify the effort. However the formality of proving there was nothing which met my needs turned out to have a surprise ending. Continue reading Netgear EVA9150
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