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(More customer reviews)EDIT: GO TAKE A LOOK AT THE ACTUAL PICTURES NOT THE PHOTO-SHOPPED ONES ANTEC MADE OF THE PRODUCT I INCLUDED ON THE AMAZONE PAGE.
FIRST: Take a look at the picture on Amazon's site for this item, On Antec's site, and on Buy.com's site. Looks great right?? Nice VFD display...(just like on the Antec Elite model) NOPE!!! NOPE!!! NOPE!!! Sure, read the fine print for the Premier model (this model) it's an LCD display. BUT NOT JUST ANY LCD DISPLAY IT'S A TINY / CROPPED \ WASHED OUT LCD DISPLY. Why does this matter? Well I expected a display was relatively close to what Antec, Amazon, and Buy.com all advertise. That display Looks Awesome!! (BTW the Display that the ANTEC ELITE (the MODEL BELOW THIS HAS).
The actual display has a very narrow angle before it begins distorting (like some LCD monitors do. So unless you are looking dead on to 10-15 degrees to the left or right. This thing is going to look WASHED out & UGLY at 45 degrees i can see all the hidden buttons around the display and the display looks almost WHITE, the display of text at that point is nearly un-readable.
Just a FLUKE with my model (NOPE!!!) Yes you can make minimal contrast adjustments but it only allows you to go from unacceptable to down right terrible! even dead on looks washed out & NOTHING, REPEAT NOTHING LIKE THE PICTURES! =============
Next issue, this unit couples or attaches inline with the Power supplies 20/24 pin main power motherboard connection. What's the problem with that? Well unlike the cable from the power supply which has solid construction and the pins don't move around / secured pins, this coupler does not, it's my only complaint with the initial setup. So it can make the insertion like attempting to herd barn cats. Think about a LOOSE pinned molex connector but instead of 4 loose pins it's 6 x that, I required two small needle nose players to get the connections to mate properly. Without that it pushed the pins out the wrong way not making a proper connection & therefore couldn't snap lock the units together. (YMMV)...
The rest of the hardware installation was straight forward. OTHER than don't bother installing the drivers off the tiny CD. Go to Antec's site & download everything from there. It MAKE sure to go through the settings & select for it to automatically check for updates, if not selected by default. I had to restart before I could get it to go out & check and YES, there are additional updates even after installing the latest offering from Antec (As of 1-2010).
[[AT THIS POINT I WOULD HAVE BEEN FAR HAPPIER HAVING BOUGHT THE ANTEC ELITE MODEL]] The Display was supposed to be the pizazz the cache' of this item. The wow factor & i'm super BUMMED by how plain & ugly it is. See that EQ picture that they show... NOPE!! Sure there is an EQ, but it looks nothing like that!!!!
A positive: The Remote control's ability to turn on & off my PC awesome!
But lets get back to the LCD screen for a bit. It's got so many areas outside of the center of the screen that light up with various features that you end up subtracting 1" off the left & right side of the screen and 1/2" of both the top & bottom of the screen. [[[LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE PICTURE THEY SHOW!!!) It's LITERALLY leaves a tiny 3" display for the scrolling or actual display of the programmable text. And while you can make SOME Font & Size adjustments. There are Some LONG words that Can't be fully displayed all at once as it tracks across the screen even at tiny TEXT SIZE that's RIDICULOUS. You know how hard it is to read something like that? If you buy this (YOU WILL!)
AND - YES the Image Ghosts like CRAZY. The Freaking ms response rate must be up in the 30ms range it's so bad & very annoying. Then take a small news blurb.. Sure you can sign up for Google, yahoo, NYtimes etc. like an RSS feed WOW right? Well what I can read by simply looking at the news displayed by the software You can read it right on the desktop when i bring that part of the included software up in say 4 seconds, but it takes 1 - 2 minutes to scroll across the tiny LCD screen. I don't know about you, but I don't have 15 minutes to read 8-10 news headlines. That even a 3rd grader could make out on the desktop in about 45 seconds... SCROLLING SPEED + AWFUL GHOSTING = FAIL!!
TINY NOT USING THE MAJORITY BUT MAYBE 2/3rds of an already tiny display = FAILED.
MAX RATE OF SCROLL THAT YOU CAN STILL READ W/O GHOSTING MAKING IT UN-READABLE FAIL!! FAIL! FAIL! Washed out color, contrast adjustment can not go DARK without making the Text go black. So if you want to see the text... that's why we got it to be able to see the display the contrast has to be set so that the screen is way too light. =====================
OK I have the software installed. I start selecting closest city for temperature and weather ( a kewl feature right? Get LCD scroll text of the weather with a city nearby. NOPE!!! NOPE!! It allows for that ONLY MAJOR CITIES. NEW YORK, CHICAGO, ENGLAND (LOL) and just a Tiny few others. Well WTF? The weather is different 2 hours away from me let alone 10 hours to chicago... FEATURE = FAIL! (unless you live in those handful of cities). Dig around some more & now another Desktop Widget for a clock / weather(closest city (independent of the first whether display this is ONLY FOR THE DESKTOP) it finds or allows from my city is now 3 hours away). OF COURSE that city CANNOT be displayed on the LCD screen just your normal desktop monitor's screen. And again only includes major & sub major cities .... Minneapolis MN, Omaha NE, Madison WI, size cities etc. No third or fourth tier cities (like Apple, Google, Windows all allow). FEATURE = FAIL! It does me no good that far away.
No listing on Antec's site for supported TV Tuner Cards. I took a chance so far I can tell you that they DO NOT WORK or recognize any of the ATI All-In-Wonder Graphic / TV Tuner Card under XP (with properly installed Analog drivers Catalyst 6.2 & before & ATI's MMC 9.08 and before). I may also install another boot & try the crappy digital drivers for the A-I-W too.
I have some hardware encoded cards I will try next (like the TV Wonder 650) but a simple list of Supported TV Tuner cards would have been helpful. (BAD ON ME FOR NOT DEMANDING THAT FROM ANTEC FIRST A buyer should always be diligent.
However, this item was on sale from [...] for $29.99 each i saw the photo read what it came with and thought WOW!! (NOW I KNOW WHY it was only $29.99!) and so i jumped in with NO time to wait for responses or I'd likely miss "the deal" ROFL at that price.
The Media Center experience from Imon LOOKS REALLY COOL (when i first started it up) It looks like a movie theater going dark about to start a movie). EXCEPT it won't find any of my files? I mean not only does the structure of the setup menus need to be reworked but they go off in loops & dead ends very annoying!
I'm no spring chicken with Media Centers.
I've used and am currently using six different main-media-Centers on several PCs and dual & triple booted systems. They are the following - XP MCE 2005, Vista Media Center, Windows 7 Media Center, ATI's Multimedia Center, and Cyberlink's Power Cinema, and Snapstream's Beyond TV) they are relatively simple and straight forward, but the IMON software suite that comes with this is NOT? I will keep at it but while the front end "looks awesome" fat lot of good that does if it won't play TV (another card may correct that), won't find & display pictures and Videos.
There are MULTIPLE CLICKS confusing dead ends GRRR things that don't belong there... The automatic searches found/detected nothing. Manual setup pointing to the files doesn't seem to be any different. It doesn't set up or find my pictures, my videos, or my A-I-W
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