Dell Zino HD Real World HTPC Customer Reviews

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:50 am

Been waiting for some real world reviews of this thing by people who are using it as an HTPC. Bunch of guys on the AVSForums have ordered them in the past few weeks and they are starting to report in. Lot's of discussion in this thread with people posting benchmarks and their impressions:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... p=17628118

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 12:52 pm

Good information there, this is what I was waiting to hear:

Here is a quick update on the 3250e + 780G (Radeon 3200).

Dual screen - confirmed. Works pretty good, though 4330 seemed to handle it easier.
Flash 10.1 - confirmed. CPU load dropped on on average 15-20%. Most clips were running 75-85% and dropped down to 55-60%. Numbers varied depending on content, but you get the idea. I did notice an occasional glitch during hulu playback but I strongly suspect it was the network here at work causing the issue because no matter how small I made the playback window or how much it reduced CPU loading (even down to 10%) the glitch was still there. Therefore, I suspect some network issue and not a h/w limitation.

Hulu Desktop seemed to handle the content better, or at least got the most benefit from flash 10.1. Saw some CPU loading down in the 40% range (from 80-90%).

Blu-ray playback - confirmed. No issues playing Blu ray movies on the box. CPU load was around 25%.

Vector Adaptive settings in Avivo panel- confirmed. However, this went away if I selected "Enforce Smooth Video Playback". Not sure why, but just what I noticed. Still investigating that one.

Also, I finally found a shot of the rear of the Zino. It confirmed my fears. Built in graphics. Or from what it know, it appears they use a mobile chipset, for the graphics but it may be swappable, but the price is probably stupid.

On another note though, it apparently uses a mini-PCI-E slot for the wireless. That could be put to some use.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:02 pm

I don't know why he was surprised it was an integrated video chip. They said that up-front. The thing IS essentiall built like a laptop. It is a seperate chip and it is upgradable (so is the CPU) but it sure wouldn't be worth it.

Sometime in the next 6 months I may buy one of these to replace my livingroom XP MCE. I will get it with the high-end graphics and dual processor CPU. The only debate would be whether to get it with Blu-Ray. I don't watch DVDs on my MCE - I have never really liked the way Windows MCE handles DVD playback. I have a separate upscaling DVD player. I really don't see any point in going Blu-Ray until it's more mainstream (so that Netflix isn't charge EXTRA for Blu-Ray discs) and stand alone players are sub-$100.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:21 pm

It wouln't have been too hard to put a low profile PCI-E slot in there. That would have changed everything. As it is, it appears that it can barely handle HD video (I'm worried mostly about streaming from a server).