Hiper Media Chassis

www.bit-tech.net/review/388

 

niiiiiiiiiiiice case, hopefully it isnt as horrificly expensive as some of the other HTPC cases, will definitely get one of these badboys to replace my antec minuet provided its cheap enough

 

Very sexy, just waiting to see how much it will cost.

It's about time I got a dedicated media PC and this case would look great with the rest of my audio/visual gear

 

grat looking case.
looks much more like a dvd player than a pc

edit: the review was a bit short tho. And you didnt mention anything about the agp riser card. And how much space there would be for anything approaching a decent gfx card to fit in.

 

This case just showed up at Scan's "today only" page, priced at £52.86.
Not too pricey for a HTPC case with a PSU'

 

Does it take MATX boards? Some more details would have been nice.

Case looks awesome though! If only I had £55 to spend...

 

Read the review

 

One of these and the ATI Xpress board ive got = uber HTPC!

 

Case does look nice, could do with more info in the review though....

What about optical drive? Does it take a standard DVD drive or need a slimline one? And is it stealthed or would that need to be modded?

The hiper website states it comes with a "Slim line optical drive to desktop IDE adaptor" Which would suggest the obvious....

It's the only thing I'm concerned about before I throw my cash at scan today....

edit: As for cost, the non-"today only" price at scan is only £55.08 inc vat
Just in case you're considering it but don't want to make a rush purchase

 

There's also a review in this months CPC (not in shops yet).

In answer to you question Logan it can only house slim line optical drives.

I'm very tempted by these myself but may just go for a cheap pre built dab tuner and pvr as that's all I need really and I don't know if I have the time to build and configure a slick HTPC.

 

looks like a harmon kardon piece of equipment

 

It does say "laptop optical drive" in the review.

Shame it doesnt have SATA connectors on the PSU and itll probably be a right sod trying to fit a SATA drive. You can get 90 degree data cables but i havent seen 90 degree SATA power :/

 

Doh! I read it twice to check before i posted.... but obviously not very well.
Apologies to mrhaz

 

Always the way we all do it

 

Also available over here.

 

Ok, it's only got one explansion plate for a PCI / AGP slot on the back. Doesn't that mean it's going to be pretty hard to get decent tv-out, 5.1, wirless and a DVB tuner...

Guess that's a bit much to ask of it but in my opinion a decent PVR/HTPC needs all these things.

 

You can get USB2 dvb tuners iirc, you can get an ATI board (939) with onboard TV out or Epia with TV out and "decent" 5.1.. i take it you dont mean onboard ac97

 

Well not really. I'd be nice to get a good phono outputs if it was going to be completely integrated into a home cinema setup.

There are a couple of nforce2 boards so I guess a digital signal could just be piped out to an external 5.1 processor. I've seen one with onboard TV out but i think it was a mx440 or something like that.

What's the quality of the tv out like on the epia boards? I wasn't really looking at going for A64 just using some spare bits I have lying around.

I'll have to look into the usb tuners but it'd be nice to fit it all into the one box.

 

you cant say that and leave us wanting to know all about this ati Xpress board, when do we get to see the reviews!!! ??? !!!

 

Epia boards arent bad, but you cant get SPDIF out as well as composite which is all they have (one or other through same port). Nothing has component video out, best youll get is Svideo.

planki - as soon as it's passed through the system mate should be soon.