Voodoo PC ARIA Media Center Evaluation @ [H] Consumer

does the post processing done by the voodoo software have much better image quality than a faroudja DCDI dvd player? also, if it is better, any chance we can get our hands on it?

oh yeah once again great review, too bad the machine didn't score too high
 
Yea you raved about it's DVD playback capabilities, and it makes me curious about how it is done. MCE doesn't support FFDShow post-processing, so I'm guessing the quality improvements are due solely to the PureVideo features of the 7800GT, but I could be wrong.
 
Xeero said:
does the post processing done by the voodoo software have much better image quality than a faroudja DCDI dvd player?
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Just got off the phone with Chris, and he told me that the answer is "yes." He's comparing it to a Panasonic S77 that he owns.
 
so what does it use then? let us htpc users/dvd post processors in on the secret?
 
I think the link to the discussion on the very last page is broken - it seems to add an extra '\' to the end of the link.

Nice review - I'm interested in the upscaling as I didn't think that MCE allowed you to do that (certainly not using ffdshow anyway.)
 
awww was kinda hoping you guy would review a voodoo desktop PC and not media center. I dunno pretty much any media center PC i've found extremely lacking. Also my ATI HDTV tuner gets bad quaility and slow channel change too.
 
I know you can do fear in widescreen but you have set all your options first. Then locate the file Settings.CFG under My Computer>Documents>Monolith Productions>FEAR. The settings you want to change are Screenwidth and Screenheight. Now when you go back into FEAR DO NOT go to the Display Options area as doing so will reset your screenwidth and screenheight to default if you do.

The only game that I know of that does true Widescreen support is Half Life 2 and possibly COD2 as it has the option for 1152x648. In widescreen mode you do get more of the scene on the screen. I myself use 1152x648 as this is an option for 720P optimized in ATI's drivers.

But it is nice to some semblance of HDTV gaming experience on the [H] finally!!!
 
thyshallsmite said:
awww was kinda hoping you guy would review a voodoo desktop PC and not media center. I dunno pretty much any media center PC i've found extremely lacking. Also my ATI HDTV tuner gets bad quaility and slow channel change too.
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ATI's HDTV Tuner is considered crap among HTPC people. Most go with the alternatives such as the Dvico FusionHDTV series cards but Media Center wont like them because Windows Media Center requires hardware decoding and I believe the only one that does that is the ATI card.

Lets just say that Chris should count his blessings that he got to try HDTV gaming on the newer cards. If he was mildly irritated at it now he would have gone postal a generation or two ago.
 
You also mentioned that Windows wont let you do 2 different resolutions on two different monitors? I had my LCD at 1280x1024 and my HDTV at 1152x648 with no problems.
 
BoogerBomb said:
You also mentioned that Windows wont let you do 2 different resolutions on two different monitors? I had my LCD at 1280x1024 and my HDTV at 1152x648 with no problems.
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You probably had 2 separate desktops - windows will not let you clone the same display onto different resolutions, which is what they were trying to do in the review.
 
IanG said:
You probably had 2 separate desktops - windows will not let you clone the same display onto different resolutions, which is what they were trying to do in the review.
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Ah ok gotcha.
 
They are asking a bit too much money for my liking...if the price was halved they'd probably gotten a 9.8 or something... :eek:
 
My comments on this review, and some of he comments here.

1- The tv tuners useed are weak. The NVTV is an old tuner with little or no support no noise redcution, no 3D comb. For a machine this expensive they should have selected the ATI 550, currently the best analog tv tuner on the market for HTPC use.

2- User comment "MCE requires hardware MPEG2 decoder." This is false. MCE uses whatever MPEG2 codec is installed on the system. NVDVD, Intervideo WinDVD and Cyberlink Power DVD are the three supported decoders. All three support hardware acceleration for decoding as supported by DXVA via the GPU on the system. Additionaly the ATI HD tuner does NOT do hardware MPEG2 decoding. Think about that: if it was doing MPEG2 decoding in hardware it would be shooting uncompressed HD across the PCI bus.Yuk. MCE will work with tuners from ATI, VBOX and a few others for HD. The common thing among these tuners: BDA drivers that don't suck. For any MCE box you want a good MPEG2 decoder that suports DXVA and a GPU that does as well so most of the decoding work is handled by the GPU. NVIDIA Pure Video Decoder + 7800GTX does this in a spectacular overkill manner.

As to MCE -vs- DCDi. This 100% depends on the GPU installed on the system. Since this box ships with a 7800GTX then NVIDIA's "Pure Video" scaler and adaptive de-interlacing are being used for TV. I can tell you this: while NVIDIAs Pure Video pixel adaptive deinterlace is pretty good it is no match for DCDi for video sourced content. Also the DCDi cadence detection and lock ability is superior to that of the Pure Video solution: recovering much faster from bad edits (where cadence changes), holding cadence lock in noisy video and exhibiting none of the weird old frame display/flash artifacts you see with The Pure Video Decoder on some NV GPUs.

If this machine ships with the NVIDIA Pure Video MPEG2 decoder (and it should since eVGA sells it on their web site and bundles it with some of their cards) then as long as the latest version is being used in "smart" mode then the user gets film cadence detection for 480i and 576i content. This yields a smoother more detailed image on film sourced broadcasts, any prime-time drama, basically anything shot on film or HD 24p video.

In a nut shell: this Media Center PC is over priced and under featured. You're paying for bling rather than perfromance, at least for a Media Center stand point. The case alone is $600 becuase of the silly touch panel on the front.They picekd the wrong tuners, the wrong case and they didn't include enough storage, becuase that damn LCD take up too much space.

-Ian
 
JMke said:
the case used is a Silverstone LC18.
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No it's not, it's an Origen AE X15e they even mention so in the article.
BoogerBomb said:
ATI's HDTV Tuner is considered crap among HTPC people. Most go with the alternatives such as the Dvico FusionHDTV series cards but Media Center wont like them because Windows Media Center requires hardware decoding and I believe the only one that does that is the ATI card.
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No HD tuner has hardware encoding, it's not needed since the Transport Stream file type that it is broadcasted in is already MPEG2. All the tuner does is let let you view the TS broadcast. The reason why no one in the HTPC community likes the ATI HD tuner is because it has been dogged with bugs ever since it was launched and ATI doesn't seem interested in fixing them.
ianken said:
1- The tv tuners useed are weak. The NVTV is an old tuner with little or no support no noise redcution, no 3D comb. For a machine this expensive they should have selected the ATI 550, currently the best analog tv tuner on the market for HTPC use.
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QFT, for MCE they're the best option out right now. For the huge price tag I'm very suprised there wasn't an HD tuner in there even if it's just OTA.
In a nut shell: this Media Center PC is over priced and under featured. You're paying for bling rather than perfromance, at least for a Media Center stand point.
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Another QFT. The [H] needs to look at 2PartsFusion for something like this next time, hell I design better HTPC systems then this. Voodoo does get major points for going with a Turion64, that kind of suprised me.
jebo_4jc said:
Yea you raved about it's DVD playback capabilities, and it makes me curious about how it is done. MCE doesn't support FFDShow post-processing, so I'm guessing the quality improvements are due solely to the PureVideo features of the 7800GT, but I could be wrong.
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I too would like to hear more about what how it's going about with the upscaling, if it's just the basic Purevideo/video card upscaling then I find it hard to imagine that it looks better then a faroudja DCDI dvd player.
 
I think im thinking about analog tuners that MCE will accept. I remember reading a while back that MCE had a list of tuners that would work and at the time no HDTV tuners were supported and they had a specific requirement for analog tuners that including hardware encoding and/or decoding. They must not really care enymore.
 
As I said MCE needs you to have a hardware encoding SD tuner, you can't have a hardware encoding HD tuner because theres nothing to encode.
 
First of all, Great Review, very informative.

Now:

The link to the voodoo website has a \ at the end, meaning it goes to voodoopc.com\/

Also for screen resolutions, in my experience if I have a 2 different resolutions in clone mode, one does the ViewPort (moves around with the mouse). I think this is a Nvidia thing though, dunno if something similar is available for ATi
 
Voodoo used to be a well respected brand. This system and a few previous systems (the silly $5k "silent" pc) make me think these guys are just sitting in a shop in Canada and trying to see just how weird they can be. Stick with what you know, eh. Gaming. Are they just trying to find something oddball and expensive so they don't have to compete with FNW and VM? I appreciate the effort to break the mold, but somewhere cost/benefit has to come into play. And no 24/7 for a product like this???
 
I really appreciate your comments, guys, thanks for supporting our work. As to the DCDi comments, yes, compared to my $250 Panasonic S77, this system was subjectively better in the DVD department. In particular I did not encounter the "macroblocking" that I have with my Panasonic.
 
Man those things are a pain to build. Ninja cableing just doesn't come easily wen its all jam packed in that thing.

Yah, we need to find a better TV-Tuner card. Any suggestions for me to bring to the higher-ups?

Rock Solid, gotta love that.
 
Mog_m said:
Man those things are a pain to build. Ninja cableing just doesn't come easily wen its all jam packed in that thing.
Yah, we need to find a better TV-Tuner card. Any suggestions for me to bring to the higher-ups?
Rock Solid, gotta love that.
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There's a sticky over in the htpc forum, y'know, but just follow Crim's advice as he's the resident expert ;)

The ati550 cards are a bit better for mce - slightly higher PQ than the Hauppauge PVR150, but might be slightly more expensive. They do come in pciex1 format though which might be an advantage. The hauppauge PVR500 is the only choice for dual tuner really. There's talk of a new nvidia tuner next month, but details are sparse - there's not as many rabid !!!!!!s getting people to leak specs like happens with VGA cards.
 
IanG said:
There's talk of a new nvidia tuner next month, but details are sparse - there's not as many rabid !!!!!!s getting people to leak specs like happens with VGA cards.
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All I know is that they're expected to annouce it at Cebit this time and that it uses a new chip (ViXS) that Avermedia is also using in one of their new cards ( M1A2 ), a friend of mine has the M1A2 in for review so hopefully when he gets around to installing it (he's currently co-authoring a book right now) I can get some details on how Avermedia's card stacks up and how the new NV tuner might turn out.
 
I am a total NOOB when it comes to media center systems like this and any other for that matter. Here's what I would want something like this to do for me:

allow me to look at my TV shows.
make it easy for me to record ANY show I wanted, HD or SD.
watch DVD movies.
Kick some serious ass in FEAR or HL2 on my really big wide screen TV in full glorious surround sound.

For over 4 thousand dollars I would expect the Voodoo could do that for me, and turn itself on for that matter. It doesnt seem like this machine did all that for you. It is disappointing you had to call them. They should have easy to follow NOOB instruction sheets just like Dell or anybody else to let you know exactly how this machine connects. Me, a NOOB could not be able to apply oversampling, or adjust the nVidia drivers to accomplish these tasks. Even with my knowlege of PCs and PC building which is probably above average.

It looks cool. So what. I think you were generous in your appraisal.
As always the review was well done.
 
I think Happy Jack makes a valid point. Is Voodoo relevant anymore? I know they were the big thing, along with Falcon, when the boutiques were really coming into their own. But I'd have a hard time recommending them now, even with that rock solid stability since it comes with such a hefty price tag. There are so many other builders out there who combine performance and value. Really, is the paint job and cool marketing mumbo jumbo worth it to anyone these days?

Any plans to review htpc in another price bracket?
 
Great review as always, Chris & co. Any plans to revise the games in your gaming tests? Sounds like Lego Star Wars is getting a little long in the tooth. What would be a good subsitution? Any suggestions out there?
 
lovemyPC said:
Great review as always, Chris & co. Any plans to revise the games in your gaming tests? Sounds like Lego Star Wars is getting a little long in the tooth. What would be a good subsitution? Any suggestions out there?
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This might be a good topic for a different thread, but let's try to keep the focus on the Voodoo PC ARIA Media Center here.
 
I'd like to make one final comment, and I hope this won't be taken the wrong way by the [H] dudes. This is my fav tech/pc site. Okay, brown-nosing is over... :)

As HTPC starts to take off more nad more into the mianstream, I see sites like [H] and others doing HTPC tech reviews. Their weakness is they are not (yet) skilled in evaulating things like de-interlacing perfromance, scaling and video fidelity in general. Years of experience reviewing hardware based on things like fill-rate and texture pipes doesn't translate well. I recently read a review of the x1900 AIW on another that claimed it can pass all of the HQV benchmark patterns for cadence detection. I am skeptical and as soon as I get one will evaluate it.

Some advice to the [H] dudes and anyone else interested in really understanding how to evaluate video:

Pick up copies of

"Avia guide to home theater"
"HQV DVD Becnhmark"
"Microsoft WHQL DVD Test Annex," including the "Rosetta Stone Rate Control" reference disc.
"Digital Video Essentials"

Understand how to interpret the test patterns.

Get a copy of the Media Center Diagnostics Kit from microsoft.com, read the docs and understand how to use Softscope.

Anyway, that'd be a good start. There are good books on the topic of video too:

Digital Video Compression by Symes
Digital Video and HDTV by Poynton
Video Demystified by Jack

There are a few others but their titles excape me at the moment.

-Ian
 
Chris_Morley said:
I really appreciate your comments, guys, thanks for supporting our work. As to the DCDi comments, yes, compared to my $250 Panasonic S77, this system was subjectively better in the DVD department. In particular I did not encounter the "macroblocking" that I have with my Panasonic.
Click to expand...

Macroblocking is not an artifact of the scaler/deinterlacer. It is an artifact of teh MPEG2 decoder. Perhaps the Panny player has a bum decoder? Who knows?

HTPCs generally look better than most DVD players becuase there is only one scaling operation taking place and you can keep most or all of the processing in the digital domain.

With an external player, depending on how you hook it up, there can be numerous D/A converion steps, and multiple scaling steps. Every time the video needs to be futzed with it degrades the quality just a bit.

An HTPC running at the displays native resolution connected via DVI will typically look awesome. My MCE rig runs to a projector via DVI. DVDs and digital TV cotnent never leave the digital domain.


-Ian
 
Why in the world does that thing have a mobile processor? How much sense does that really make considering the other components? I understand its about power consumption and heat, less power means less heat but then you slap a stock 7800GTX in the same package? To me it doesn't make sense. The addition of the XP120 also is an intersting choice for a mobile processor and HTPC. I like it but not on their choice of processor.

Wouldn't the machine better of with an X2 or other 939 processor and then an aftermarket cooler like the NV5 on the 7800GTX to exhaust hot air out the back. I realize that your losing a slot to use the NV5 but in an htpc it might be worth it considering the noise reduction over the stock cooler.

The choices of components are somewhat suspect.
 
popgoestheweasel said:
Why in the world does that thing have a mobile processor?
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Because the Mobile processor runs much cooler then a standard desktop CPU which means that it's better for an even quieter system which is what you want in an HTPC. This was a great choice of Voodoo and suprised the hell out of me.

Less heat+ less power draw= really quiet PC.

The GTX's stock cooler is actually decently quiet but yeah an NV5 would have been tons better.

The choices of components are somewhat suspect.
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The tuner? Yeah I agree, everything else looked pretty good though (with the exception of the silly lack of HDD grommets).
 
lovemyPC said:
I think Happy Jack makes a valid point. Is Voodoo relevant anymore? I know they were the big thing, along with Falcon, when the boutiques were really coming into their own. But I'd have a hard time recommending them now, even with that rock solid stability since it comes with such a hefty price tag. There are so many other builders out there who combine performance and value. Really, is the paint job and cool marketing mumbo jumbo worth it to anyone these days?

Any plans to review htpc in another price bracket?
Click to expand...

Not all of our systems need the paintjob. Look at a stock omen. It is true, you do pay for the case, but the case does have amazing airflow, and water cooling.

Voodoo is somewhat of a status and lifestyle computer, but I shouldnt really talk about the price as thats not really my area, I just build them.


I am a total NOOB when it comes to media center systems like this and any other for that matter. Here's what I would want something like this to do for me:

allow me to look at my TV shows.
make it easy for me to record ANY show I wanted, HD or SD.
watch DVD movies.
Kick some serious ass in FEAR or HL2 on my really big wide screen TV in full glorious surround sound.

For over 4 thousand dollars I would expect the Voodoo could do that for me, and turn itself on for that matter. It doesnt seem like this machine did all that for you. It is disappointing you had to call them. They should have easy to follow NOOB instruction sheets just like Dell or anybody else to let you know exactly how this machine connects. Me, a NOOB could not be able to apply oversampling, or adjust the nVidia drivers to accomplish these tasks. Even with my knowlege of PCs and PC building which is probably above average.

It looks cool. So what. I think you were generous in your appraisal.
As always the review was well done.
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I totally agree. We are currently in the works of adding MUCH better documentation that is custom taylored for each of our machines. For example, if you buy a computer with Dual 7800 GTX we will tell you what slot to plug in your monitor for single monitor, or for dual monitor. We will also explain how dual monitors do not work in SLI.

Yah, I agree the TV Tuner could use some work. The Dual TV Tuner is neat, but not worth the lack of HD TV support.

Anything else you would like me to cover?

Ps. I am an employee of Voodoo PC, but I am posting in my spair time as a private user that has a little bit of information on voodoo, and the processes and products, and by no means are my responces authorized or in any way representing Voodoo PC. Just thought I would put that out their ;)
 
Good review, as usual. I pretty much expected the low score on value, I always drool over Voodoo computers but then the price always knocks me back down to earth.

Mog_m, are you guys located in the Foothills industrial park? I know you used to be downtown near St. Mary's High School, but you moved, right?
 
Mog_m said:
Yah, I agree the TV Tuner could use some work. The Dual TV Tuner is neat, but not worth the lack of HD TV support.
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A Hauppuage PVR500 is a dual tuner card in a single PCI slot, I would have went with that plus a good HD tuner (Dvico, Avermedia, Vbox).
Anything else you would like me to cover?
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I'd like to know more about the mentioned DVD upscaling, is this just Purevideo and the video card or do you actually have an app that does the upscaling like FFDShow (which doesn't work with the MCE DVD player)?
Ps. I am an employee of Voodoo PC, but I am posting in my spair time as a private user that has a little bit of information on voodoo, and the processes and products, and by no means are my responces authorized or in any way representing Voodoo PC. Just thought I would put that out their ;)
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I'm glad someone from Voodoo poped in offering to answer questions. :)
 
Probably means he will be fired soon, that seems to be the way things go, but yeah I almost expect the CEO/Headcheze of some osrt at least pop in and answer a few questions. Velocity Micro got torn aprart in their first review and the Headcheese still posted and responded to questions.
 
Great way to start my first post on this forum, huh?

But VoodooPC is way off the mark with their pricing on the Aria system. Sure that LCD display is kewl, if there weren't the resolution issues. And I can't evaluate the worth of the DVD upscaler they included. And it seems their support is superb. But a $3,700 starting price? Gimme a break!

I just finished building my latest HTPC a couple of weeks ago: Shuttle XPC ST20G5, AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+, 1GB of Mushkin high performance RAM, ATI X700 video card, ATI Elite Wonder tuner/capture card, 300GB Maxtor SATA II drive. $1,550 total.

Obviously I had no gaming pretensions with this system, but subtract the X700 video card, and add in an X1900XTX, voila a killer SSF gaming box for a net difference of maybe $500.

So my home built HTPC upgraded to gaming specs is still ~$1,600 cheaper, and arguably much faster with the ATI video card and X2 3800+ CPU, compared to the Turion and nVidia setup of the Aria.

Am I missing something here? I freely admit that the pre and post asale support is valuable, but I would peg it as a $500 value at best.
 
oellrich, they've always been expensive. I guess the custom finishes and other little touches add some value, but it just seems to be accepted that they charge more than most.
 
Ian,

Please excuse me for cutting down the quote, but I wanted to focuse on one issue you brought up, the X1900 AIW.

I cannot fathom why ATI has failed to bring the 550 chip to thier high-end AIWs, its performance is clearly superior to the 200. So why bother with an AIW. Stuff a TV Wonder Elite in to a PCI slot and get the best video/video capture that ATI has to offer and then choose whatever video card fits your needs, ATI, nVidia, S3...

ianken said:
Years of experience reviewing hardware based on things like fill-rate and texture pipes doesn't translate well. I recently read a review of the x1900 AIW on another that claimed it can pass all of the HQV benchmark patterns for cadence detection. I am skeptical and as soon as I get one will evaluate it.

-Ian
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ATI has stated that they feel their new GPU more then makes up for the 200 chips and that, right now, 550 intergration isn't needed. It's a load of BS, we all know it is.
oellrich said:
Ian,

Please excuse me for cutting down the quote, but I wanted to focuse on one issue you brought up, the X1900 AIW.

I cannot fathom why ATI has failed to bring the 550 chip to thier high-end AIWs, its performance is clearly superior to the 200. So why bother with an AIW. Stuff a TV Wonder Elite in to a PCI slot and get the best video/video capture that ATI has to offer and then choose whatever video card fits your needs, ATI, nVidia, S3...
Click to expand...
 
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