Has anyone had a chance to use one of these systems? I'm thinking about getting a replacement for my current non-existent home theater system, and this one seems like a good choice at first glance. Of course, I haven't found much information for it other than on Genesi's website, and there aren't many reviews to be found. Here's a link to the system:
http://www.pegasosppc.com/homemedia.php

If anyone knows of some reviews of this system that would help. The system is a lot of money, and I'd like to make sure I'm buying the right one.

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Joshua Purcell

Well, the Home Media Center by Genesi is very beautyful and it is worth all the money it costs.

Unfortunately it is aimed at big professional uses such as hotels, conference halls, VIP rooms, luxurious multimedia presentations, hospitals, etc., where it is necessary noiseless fanless cooling and even the case design must demonstrate that the user purchased a very "cool" design multimedia device to keep high his reputation.

Its price is due to the fact that Genesi had choosen the multimedia cards which fits flawlessly into Pegasos II/Open Desktop Workstation motherboard (the core of the multimedia system), and together with the drivers of these hardware which are REALLY available via Linux (which keeps alive and up all the media system), and they tuned up all the system.

If you are not interested in a completely fanless-noiseless solution, and not very professional one, then you could buy a Pegasos II system and install yourself all media cards and OS, getting rid of the expesive components, such as the case which is ALL PURE ALUMINIUM and designed to grant even in critical situations all air cooling by fanless all passive system.
Its price is almost 700 euro as shown by a friend of mine on a computer newspaper here in Italy.

I leave you the honour and the task to calculate exchange US$ vs. Euro at current rates of this case alone, and calculate how much you could save by building all by yourself by starting from a standard Pegasos II.

According to Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco on their blog site there is a young who manage to create a media center of his own, by starting with Pegasos II G4 1Ghz, Debian Linux OS, and some multimedia cards, at a very cheap price, and it is more performant than many Intel Microsoft Multimedia based solutions priced even at 1300 US$ or more.

http://bbrv.blogspot.com/2006/01/la-vic ... -nous.html


I think you could ask directly to this guy Jean Nicolas to obtain more infos.

Ciao,

Raffaele

P.S.: Here I want to ask BB&RV if they could create a low end user Multimedia Center, which could be sold to those who want a standard solution and not a top-o-market one.

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Que viva el Pegasos Amiga.

Thanks for the response. I have up until this point always thought that I would be purchasing individual parts to put together the right computer, but I thought that getting an already existing system from a company I'd like to support may be the best choice. Their are two issues with this route though: the cost (as you mentioned), as well as lack of many reviews/comparisons.

I'll keep looking for reviews before making a decision on this. Thanks for you help.

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Joshua Purcell

Hi Joshua, have you seen this presentation:

http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jht ... =184430007

R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Thanks for the link. It has much of the information I was looking for on this system. One thing I'm beginning to realize while looking for information on this Home Media Center is that there just aren't many comparable products (that have the same capabilities/features). Of course any custom-built computer would have theses features if that was the intention, but this pre-built system does everything needed and it's already assembled.

I did have one question regarding the article posted though. I was under the impression that this system supports HDTV, and it seems to mention that it does a few times in the article. Then the last sentence says this:So in what way does the Home Media Center support HDTV if there is work planned that will be centered around implementing HDTV in the future?
That seems to be a good price considering what I'm seeing (€2115.50, or US $2500). Was the €700 price really how much this system went for at one point, or was that just some really good short-lived deal? Is there a list of resellers or other online places where this unit could be found?

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Joshua Purcell

Hi,

The case we are using is the hfx from Mcubed (http://www.mcubed-tech.com). It costs 340 euro in small volumes not including the vacuum fluorescent display, remote control, heatpipes, hard drive cages, passive PSU, ... With all these accessories, the price exceeds 700 euro.

You'll need a genesi motherboard and cpu, ram, dual analog SD-TV tuner, single HDTV/DVB tuner, GPU, SATA hard drive(s) (storing movies), IDE flash (storing OS). The software is all open source except for some drivers (GPU and HDTV - which we have ported ourselves). We have written drivers to allow one to control mouse and keyboard using a remote control, we have ported the SDTV drivers to powerpc, altivec optimized core media/voip libraries, ... We have also ported 3D engines, physics engines to the PowerPC platform and some example applications.

The HAL/OF combined with XGI graphics, and power-efficient PowerPC processors make an attractive solution. Our 5200b SoC board consumes only 3-6 Watt and plays High-Def content. It makes a perfect satelite for a home entertainment system.

Pieter

Thanks for the information... I thought €700 sounded way too good to be true. I can understand why this system costs $2500, but I'm always looking for ways to make my money stretch as far as possible .

I have some more detailed questions related to software versions used(for MythTV or any other packages installed) and possible Linux distribution options (hopefully Ubuntu 6.06 is one), and I'll be sending an email to the sales <at> pegasosppc.com to get more information. I don't mind keeping this information available in this thread if someone on this forum has the information though... thanks for all who have responded so far.

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Joshua Purcell

Hi !

As Joshua, I'm also really interested by Genesi's Home Media Center and by making my own multimedia player.
But at the time I really find that 2115 euros is just too much for private users like me (even if the price is understandable as Pieter explained).
So I was planning to do a light-one with my future EFIKA board (see http://empx.free.fr) but I guess that it should also be possible to build one with my PegII.

@pvdabeel / bbrv / neko :
Is the open source software used only a Gentoo + MythTV or is there more ?
Is there an install CD/DVD available somewhere that we could easily download ? We could then make our "cheap" Media Center easily just by buying a brand new PegasosII/ODW board from your website and a few less expensive stuff from our own ?

Seems that You hadn't understood I was referring to the case alone, and suggesting that getting rid of it in a standard Pegasos System you had saved almost 700 euro.
I was not referring to a complete system.

Next time I had to explain my statements better.

However look back at my words. I think I was clear writing of the price of the case.
Still I am of the Idea that a Home Media Center II aimed at low end users, it will be a good idea to increase sells of Pegasos II motherboards.

Think just the fact that previous multimedia solutions build on PPC CPUs performed very well their task to offer a complete muiltimedia center based on Linux, and were just simply clocked at only 250MHz (Multimedia DreamBox DM 7000 and 7020 sold here in Europe).

Sure a standard multimedia center based on Pegasos aclocked at 1 GHz could attract many people for its standard pricing and will be like entering multimedia market with a siege ram.

Or better it will be very kind by Genesi to gift the Pegasos buyers with a detailed guide they could find in the motherboard package, which will show them how to build and install hardware and software to obtain a complete home multimedia center solution with standard components.

I think of a sort of "do-it-yourself" instruction book à la "Pegasos Book" By Geoffrey Charra, which could be useful to Pegasos buyers to build a complete multimedia center if they want one.

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Que viva el Pegasos Amiga.

Very good idea !

Geoffrey, we just forwarded a couple of documents that should assist you...

R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Those documents seem to be very interesting.
Thanks bbrv

Is the step by step explanation included in the PPT copyrighted or something, or can I include parts of it in the Peg book ?

You can!

R&B

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Great !

I just need a TV tuner card like the one described now

I'm also very interested in these documents. Do these documents contain more information on the Home Media Center, and if so what type of step-by-step explanation is covered? Do you have plans to create a Media Center version of the Pegasos Book ?

Sorry about being nosy, but I'm wanting to make the decision on whether or not to buy this system sometime within the next couple of days.

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Joshua Purcell