Arctic has released a small form factor PC that comes pre-installed with the recently-released XBMC 12 media center software. The Arctic MC001-XBMC is available in the United States and Europe. It measures 161 x 40 x 266mm with the PC attached to the stand. The MC001-XBMC comes in black or white and should fit easily into your AV rack.
The HTPC can be used to playback a variety of music and video file formats and can also be used as a network attached storage (NAS) device. On the software side of things, it comes pre-loaded with XBMC 12 “Frodo” and Openelec 3.0. It can act as a media center and television PVR.
The HTPC is powered by a dual core Intel Atom D525 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5430 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, 2GB DDR3 1333MHz system memory, and a 1TB laptop hard drive (5400 RPM). Networking is handled by a Gigabit Ethernet controller and a 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi radio.
The front of the system includes an IR receiver, two USB 3.0 ports, two audio jacks (headphone/mic), and a card reader. The back of the MC001-XBMC features the following IO options.
- 6 x analog audio jacks
- 1 x S/PDIF optical audio output
- 1 x VGA
- 1 x HDMI
- 1 x RJ45 (Gigabit Ethernet)
- 5 x USB 2.0
- 1 x DVB-T connector for the ATSC tuner
- 1 x DC power jack (19V, 60W)
The XBMC 12 UI is a Windows Media Center alternative, and while setting up TV recording features requires additional software and is more difficult to setup it is otherwise a decent media center experience. Users can control the HTPC using the included infrared remote or via apps on Android or iOS smartphones.
The MC001-XBMC comes with a two year warranty and has an MSRP of $229 US or EUR 199. It is no speed demon by any means, but the SFF system is plenty of hardware to playback up to 1080p video files.
Is this thing running on
Is this thing running on windows with XBMC installed or is XBMC considered its own OS?
If it has Win 7 on it, WOW!
its runing on open-elec
its runing on open-elec (linux)
Worth noting that there is
Worth noting that there is also a couple of bare-bones models of thi. I just ordered the MC001-N model sans RAM, HD, and optical drive for 99 euros. As I have all those things kicking around anyway, that’s a steal! Link:
http://www.amazon.de/ARCTIC-MC001-N-Entertainment-Computer-Barebone/dp/B005AR1RT6/
Do note that AMD does not
Do note that AMD does not support Dolby True HD & DTS-HD under Linux.
What is the max bit rate at
What is the max bit rate at 1080p? With no high end audio codecs, I’ll stick to my future $400 HTPC build.
Can you please tell me or
Can you please tell me or supply me with information to get the DVB TV tuner to be recognized and working under Openelec 3.0.3 and XBMC.