Legit Reviews

ASRock Core 100HT Home Theater PC Review

Desktop PCs of 3 or more years ago were power hungry enough that most users shut them down while they were not in use. Today's low-power nettop platform has stunned the world with how small PCs can be if you can afford to sacrifice a little of today's performance standards. Today we take a look at the ASRock Core 100HT home theater PC that brings the best of both worlds by providing a nettop-sized PC with the performance of Intel's Core i processor line. Read on to find out if this tiny HTPC is right for you!

The ASRock Core 100HT HTPC offers a well rounded home theater experience for those who do not need or want a beast of a PC running 24/7. Many users run their HTPC non-stop and having low power consumption keeps money in the bank. The ASRock Core 100HT uses less power at idle than two 13W CFL energy efficient lightbulbs! As far as performance goes, the ASRock Core 100HT is a more robust system for playing HD content than most nettop platforms such as the Intel Atom platform or the AMD Fusion APU platform if you plan on running any tasks in the background like ripping DVDs or Blu-Rays or even re-encoding video content.

Article Title: ASRock Core 100HT Home Theater PC Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1568/1/

Well... I have a whole new perspective on HTPCs. They are no longer worth it. You can't really game on this machine unless it's Flash based or a PopCap game. It also lacks a video capture card, the reason HTPCs became popular in the first place. So what are you left with here? A $600 media streamer? After seeing what file formats my parents new TV plays I think you are better off buying a Blu-Ray player and an external drive.

Samsung players support a ton of codecs, are Internet ready and have apps preinstalled. So what am I getting here over a $110 Samsung Blu-Ray player that plays HD files, can stream Netflix and connects to the Internet?

Here is a picture from the Samsung manual that states the file codecs and resolutions. I have played with the TV a bit and so far every movie I've thrown at it plays flawlessly.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v634/ ... upport.png
Samsung Apps that can be installed on most newer TVs and Blu-Ray players.

Good, comprehensive review and definitely an encouraging option to replace my existing ION330 - though I gather there are i5 and i7 to be had in the same housing.

Two things:
what about an additional review running XBMC - the asrock is very popular for Xbmc dharma users!
How about also reviewing it's ability in W7 when using USB tv receivers

Great stuff though. Thanks.