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 Zalman HD160XT Plus HTPC Chassis review

 By: Hilbert Hagedoorn Edited by Joshua Finger | Published: February 19, 2008  


 

Zalman HTPC HD160XT PLUS review

But agree with me on this; you can never watch too many Pussycat Dolls shaking their asses in High-Def can you ?

Zalman HTPC HD160XT PLUS review

And if you are not sure what media file you are playing .. just look at the LCD, that's right Pusscat Dolls - Stick With You. And this is where we land at the distress that is called the touch screen.

See by itself it's pretty nice integration of an additional monitoring screen. EQ display, file name, file size, codec, resolution, sound output. And a plethora of other stuff can be shown through it. One of my annoyances was this screen .. you are looking at a graphics equalizer that is not being displayed since we output our sound digitally towards the Onkyo receiver. The software can not process the direct digital SPDIF signal and thus only when you output sound analog (cables), the Equalizer will show graphics. Gosh that blows so much.

Zalman HTPC HD160XT PLUS review

But then he real sting. Why is this a touch screen ? I have no idea. Honestly you'll never stand up and use it. I mean, you can and will do everything with the remote control.

There's a also another deficit to having two screens on a HTPC. The Plasma screen to the right is the primary screen that displays movies, the LCD it's embedded software. Now due to the nature of windows, when you turn off the plasma screen, the LCD will become the primary screen. It's a sort of plug and play feature.

So if you leave your PC power ON yet the power off the plasma screen. The next time you startup a movie ... it'll startup in the LCD as that screen became your "primary" monitor.

Even worse, if you disable the plasma screen too early, the next time windows will boot up on this little screen and show the Front View info as shown above .. on the plasma TV. Really mind bogglingly nauseating. So you need to switch off the components in the proper sequence .. first the HTPC and then the Primary Monitor, in our case the Plasma screen. Else you are pretty much screwed and will have to reconfigure these settings. It's not the fault of the iMon software programmers or Zalman though, no it's the nature of Windows XP/Vista. I'm just telling you my experiences so you guys know what you can expect.

Next to that from within this iMon software you can select movies, music and such with internal iMon software with the help of the touch-screen. That function is however inconvenient; so much that you'll never use it. Also you don't want to do that stuff on a small 7" screen .. the big telly is where it all happens. As cool as a touch-screen sounds; the 7" display should sum up media info and a few extra's, nothing more. You want to be on your sofa with a remote in your hands; that's it right ?

Let me show you a couple of features that I did like.



 


 

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