Had Alternatively, a new EEEBoxen (1501p) tested, but I did not so pretty in design.
Another big advantage of ZBox is opening the housing. This can be opened by a few easily accessible screws without problems. (As opposed to EeeBox)
I have replaced the hard drive with a SSD and put the integrated 250GB hard drive in an external eSATA enclosure.
The now external hard drive I use for the recordings of the media center.
The device has 2 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports. (One port on the front of the housing and each of the back)
Unfortunately, I realized that apparently there are still problems with USB 3.0. So do not run on that some devices. For me these were the USB keyboard and the USB DVB-C tuner.
These are recognized but not function.
So most directly a USB hub also order !!
One of the USB 2.0 ports is also simultaneously the eSATA port.
I use currently 3 USB DVB-C tuner (2x Technisat CableStar incl. CI slot and 1x Sundtek MediaTV Pro) in Media Center. To integrate I use DVBLink. The works so far very good.
Computer performance is very good.
Important here is to use drivers that support the NVidia hardware acceleration.
Codes used and driver software:
Shark007 Codec Packet
Hali Splitter
NVidia 258.96
With this I have when playing for example ZDF HD a CPU load of 20-30%.
Playback of Full HD movies via network (1080p MKV with Dolby) is even lower at about 5-10%. (Though this is certainly with the format of the films is related)
The simultaneous recording of other channels in the background does not actually noticeable. (Perhaps 1-3% CPU more)
The Blue-ray playback unfortunately I could not test so far.
The device has 2 GB DDR2 main memory. A slot is still free, so that another module can be installed without problems.
For the "normal" Media Center operating 1GB is sufficient, however.
For volume, I can not agree with the Vorrezesion.
My ZBox is inaudible. It may of course be that the CPU load during playback Blueray is higher and thus the fan also needs to work more. For me, when playing live TV but this is not audible.
I had also tested Linux on the ZBox, with Ubuntu 10.04, XBMC and VDR integration. Here are / but there were problems with the standby, this is probably not currently using the USB 3.0 clearly and immediately wakes up from standby.
Although there is a workaround, but with this then wakes the computer by moving the mouse is no longer out of standby on. (Ie not with USB attached USB remote control)
The blue ring in the housing is in operation the way through to, during standby pulsates this. This can be disabled if desired in the BIOS.
As a software PowerDVD Version 9 is with Blueray support. An upgrade to the latest version 10 can be purchased for about 50.
I am very satisfied with the device and would buy it again!
