AVADirect HTPC @ [H] Consumer

HTPCs aren't particularly hard to build, but they're damn hard to build well. Even Maingear, who we believe to be the best boutique there is, had some trouble with their Prysma media center. We have a lot of respect for companies that make an honest effort in building a good HTPC unit.

We hope that our comments and thoughts help AVA work out some of the kinks. We're big fans of their customer service philosophy and there are a number of readers that have bought from them based on our evaluations. Even though AVA did not receive a full recommendation this time around, we still feel they're a great company with the potential to change the landscape in a very positive way.

As a PC, we can whole-heartedly recommend the AVADirect. As an HTPC, however, we felt there were some major misses. About the only aspect of this HTPC that impressed us was the great up-conversion that it performed on DVDs. Otherwise, recording TV shows was very rudimentary, and our configuration made no allowance for HDTV recording or FM tuning. It’s true that some additional hardware upgrades would have resolved most of our problems with the HTPC, but, at the same time, users would have to balance out the extra cost of such upgrades with the capabilities that they are looking for. With the basic setup that we received, this is a capable, albeit incredibly expensive, DVR setup.

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Thanks for reading!

Great read. Just a question, what software (or combination of software) allows for the upconverting of DVD's to 1080i?

ChiZZad said:

Great read. Just a question, what software (or combination of software) allows for the upconverting of DVD's to 1080i?

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All DVD playback software automatically upscales to whatever resolution you are running the desktop in. Since we were running the desktop at 1080 when connected to the HD display, that was the resolution that was being upscaled to.

There are audio ports as well, but AVADirect didn’t bother to hook them up through the X-Fi card. This is a common flaw, but one that continues to irritate us to some extent.

I'm sure this doesn't really need to be pointed out, I hope companies aren't being dinged for this sort of thing.

Almost all of the X-Fi cards do not support the standard FPIO header and thus, front panel audio ports can't be connected to them. The newest "budget" models - the ExtremeAudio (without hardware acceleration) and the ExtremeGamer (the one that goes for about $90) do have the standard IO port, but I think they only work with HD-Audio compliant connectors.

I believe Dell is the exception to this because they have a custom design to connect to the IO header on Creative's hardware.

If you'd stuck with the motherboard's onboard audio they might have connected the FPIO audio ports. Maybe something to check out in a future system review?

I liked the article, though I have to admit I wouldn't have configured an HTPC with such power-hungry components when something that uses much less power would do. A video card with a double-wide cooler really doesn't have much place in an mATX case when it's possible that you'd have two or more tuners for PVR use. Just my opinion, of course.

[edit] - just saw bobzdar's post below and it made me think of something, related to what I said in the last few sentences in this post. These components aren't so much for HTPC use as they are a "power system" in an mATX desktop-style case. If you were building an HTPC you'd probably want a motherboard with onboard audio that includes digital audio outputs onboard to eliminate the need for an expansion bracket or add-in sound card - the X-Fi isn't going to do anything for audio through a receiver that the onboard sound can't, and depending on your motherboard you might wind up with an onboard sound solution that supports something useful for HTPC use, like Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect, two features that Creative still does not support. I'm surprised to not see Intel's DG965OT or DG965WH available as an option for a "custom HTPC" on their website.

DDR2-800 or DDR2-667 probably won't make much of a difference in HTPC applications, but the use of a Raptor as a primary hard drive, while expected for maybe a gaming system, isn't really needed for an HTPC. And, as I said above, a video card that sucks that much power doesn't have a place in an HTPC. An X1650XT or 7600GT would be more than enough, as long as the system is intended for HTPC use and not gaming in 1920x1080 with all of the quality options cranked up. Hell, I've got an X1600 Pro in a system connected to a TV and at 720p it games pretty well. Consequently, a 700W power supply is pretty crazy. There are some really nice, quiet 500W supplies that would be more than enough. The PVR-250 is an older capture card... I see they've got some different models listed there but I agree that not being given the option to configure it with more than one tuner card is odd for a home theatre system.

To be fair, some of this I think is more on AVA than the review. A lot of companies offering custom HTPCs - and a lot of people trying to build their own - think they can just take the same hardware they would put in a gaming system, add a tuner card and call it an HTPC. Lots of times that doesn't take into consideration noise, heat, power use and - most importantly for an HTPC - supported features and I/O. But all of that requires a lot more effort on the part of the system builder (be it a company or just someone rolling their own) and most don't seem interested in doing the extra work.

There are a couple of points with the review I don't know if I agree with. Dinging them for the computer not having hdtv or fm tuner capability when YOU didn't outfit it with either of them doesn't seem right to me. Also, the audio ports and volume control not being hooked up would be a big deal to me on an htpc, regardless of whether the sound card supported it. If the sound card didn't support it, I'd like to be informed, not just sent the computer without the ports hooked up. The end result of the review would probably be the same for me, but for those different reasons.

It does sound like they have top notch tech support and build a great computer, but for the money I'd like all of the audio ports hooked up or at minimum being told they wouldn't work and have the option to change my sound card. Though, to be honest, I'd stick with the on-board sound. In my experience, the difference in sound quality is not enough to make spending any extra money on it worth anything.

I have an htpc (actually sff pc) hooked to a hd projector, though suprisingly my computer has both optical in and out. I'm surprised that case does not, especially being a dedicated htpc. I ended up going for the ati hdtv wonder and attendant remote, and as I don't have MCE, I use the ati software. It all works pretty well, but was a bit of a headache to do so and the customization isn't what I'd like. Ordering a computer with it installed, and especially with the apparent very good tech support of this company, would probably be the way to go as you could let them get it all working and the hdtv quality is excellent.

I really do like the review format even if I don't always agree with the results, but the information included is enough to where I can generate my own opinion rather than going with the reviewers opinion. Good job.

In the Oblivion gaming summary section you said "With NVIDIA cards, Bloom lighting and Anti-Aliasing cannot be enabled while running in HDR, so the settings weren’t as high as they could be, but we were still very pleased with the image that we got from the allowed settings."

I could have sworn the 8 series was able to do this now...I guess I could be mistaken. However, great article and even though AVA's htpc solution seemed pricey it actually seemed good for the configuration and the duties it wasn't intended to do...

Dark Prodigy said:

I could have sworn the 8 series was able to do this now...I guess I could be mistaken. However, great article and even though AVA's htpc solution seemed pricey it actually seemed good for the configuration and the duties it wasn't intended to do...

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It can, but you have to enable it manually in the Nvidia control panel since Oblivion won't let you do it in the options menu.

Anyway nice review. The lack of a dual tuner card is pretty much criminal IMO. Being able to watch one channel while recording another is a basic necessity for any combo recorder, not to mention two tuners so you can record two channels at once!

bobzdar said:

Dinging them for the computer not having hdtv or fm tuner capability when YOU didn't outfit it with either of them doesn't seem right to me.

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We ordered AVA's basic HTPC configuration. We didn't ding them for not including an HDTV tuner, but simply pointed out that if you don't incur the extra cost, the lack of functionality is sorely missed.

As far as the restore disc thing goes its just not HTPC's that dont include them anymore none of thier computers do. I just bought my comp with them and when I called about not getting a restore disc I was told they had issues with making them work and so had dropped them from their builds. That was back in early january.

Gary_Huff said:

We ordered AVA's basic HTPC configuration. We didn't ding them for not including an HDTV tuner, but simply pointed out that if you don't incur the extra cost, the lack of functionality is sorely missed.

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So is your recommendation that they modify their basic config, or that they should have mentioned this to you when you spoke with them?

I guess the problem I have is that the "with reservations" rating seems to imply a fault with AVA, rather than the fact that the specific configuration you chose isn't the best for an HTPC.

Oh well, it's their technical support, low prices, and the number of components available for which I like AVA Direct. I'm still looking forward to buying an AVA Direct gaming computer when Vista SP1 arrives later this year

Gary

AndonSage said:

So is your recommendation that they modify their basic config, or that they should have mentioned this to you when you spoke with them?

I guess the problem I have is that the "with reservations" rating seems to imply a fault with AVA, rather than the fact that the specific configuration you chose isn't the best for an HTPC.

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The fault is that to make the most of an HTPC configuration would result in a machine that would be approaching the $3000 mark. This means that you'd have to do a lot of juggling with components in order to achieve the best balance between performance and features. We loved AVADirect as a company, but we have reservations when it comes to the HTPC arena. This is a standard feeling regard most HTPCs though.

I learned of Avadirect through your previous review of an ABS computer.I wished to purchase a new computer and visited their site.They had an AMD 939 system listed that I wished to configure and contacted them.The person I talked to said this was old technology and could not do business with me and hung up the phone.

Several weeks later I called to configure a core 2 system. Halfway through the conversation the rep said he had an important call from China and would call me back.No return call was ever made to me.During the first call I never left my name so the rep had no idea he had previously had talked to me.

I seems incredible to me a firm would refuse to sell a customer what he wants.This post is not inteded to start a discussion about processors.It is just one persons unfavorable experience.

deruberhanyok said:

A lot of companies offering custom HTPCs - and a lot of people trying to build their own - think they can just take the same hardware they would put in a gaming system, add a tuner card and call it an HTPC.

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I completely agree. Building a bonafide HTPC is a difficult undertaking, and damn near no one is actually doing it right. Adding a tuner card does not an HTPC make .

As far as what AVA was dinged on or not dinged on, they were NOT penalized for not including an HD tuner or dual tuners. They WERE penalized for not having the option of dual tuners available.

They were also penalized slightly for not hooking up the front ports - FPIO issues or not, there are a few companies that have made it work. For a system like this one with such an emphasis on front port functionality, it was sorely disappointing that we couldn't use them.

They were also penalized for not having a restore disc - in our opinion, there's no excuse. There are several imaging software packages - some free - that do a fine job. Again, this wouldn't just be for the consumer, but for the techs as well. It's an excellent tool to have for troubleshooting.

Equipping an HTPC without S/PDIF sound in this day and age is almost a crime - there was also a bit taken off for this.

One of the more signficant criticisms we had was DVD playback functionality not being tested in Media Center. There may not be a more obvious checkpoint for testing functionality, and it didn't give us a lot of confidence that AVA is covering all of their bases in building these units.

There were a few more minor things, but these were the major points. Again, building a true HTPC is not easy, so while we had some criticisms to hand out, we also applaud them for their efforts.

rico34 said:

I learned of Avadirect through your previous review of an ABS computer.I wished to purchase a new computer and visited their site.They had an AMD 939 system listed that I wished to configure and contacted them.The person I talked to said this was old technology and could not do business with me and hung up the phone.

Several weeks later I called to configure a core 2 system. Halfway through the conversation the rep said he had an important call from China and would call me back.No return call was ever made to me.During the first call I never left my name so the rep had no idea he had previously had talked to me.

I seems incredible to me a firm would refuse to sell a customer what he wants.This post is not inteded to start a discussion about processors.It is just one persons unfavorable experience.

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I'm sorry, I find this extraordinarily hard to believe. I can see them saying that was old technology and recommending an upgrade, but Misha, Gary, and Liliya would never turn away business just like that. In our experience, callbacks have always been quite prompt.

One thing I would suggest them to add to any HTPC custom build is the ability to configure it with more than 1 tuner. They don't even give you the option, and a good portion of their cards are older. They should be able to offer the dual tuner nvidia card or the hauppauge card. Then offer a seperate HD card from Avermedia or DVICO.

And yes, no vista option does kinda suck, since they made some nice improvements to the MCE interface.

And, i think the [H] crew overdid it when they placed their order. They did buy a gaming rig with a tuner card. A c2d/6600 and 8800GTS are a bit overkill for something that's supposed to be very silent and not generate enough heat to cook on. My personal HTPC is a low-voltage athlon XP (read: no fan), 6600 video card, 1gb of DDR ram, 3 tuners (1 HDTV) etc etc. Mostly spare parts, but the motherboard has a decent onboard soundcard that does S/PDIF (coax) out, and DVI on the video to connect to the projector. My biggest producer of noise is the 2 hard drives... Which i'm still trying to figure out how to silence without cooking.

Even using Avadirect's site, i configured a modest setup and was only to $1700...

You know even though I tend to be an AVAdirect cheerleader here I honestly believe you guys were fairly unfair in this case. You didnt order things you complained about functionality wise. Kinda hard for them to make it do things you didnt pay for or ask for it to do. Kinda like even mentioning the case issue when you werent paying enough attention to see that you hadnt ordered what you thought you had.

I believe in some cases your concerns about the front panel connections are spot on... Its something the industry needs to address but I think the root of the problem lies with Creative(and the other sound card makers) for not providing the hook ups on their card or for not providing the harnesses to hook things up. Why should any builder be required to go out and have a custom harness made to fix that? Sure you are right some already do that and thats great but not everyone has that kind of resources(cost or material or manpower).

I also agree that there was a break down in the testing phase to have totally missed the DVD playback in media center and the fact that no decoder other than WMP was installed.

I dont agree with the whole restore disc issues. While it would be nice to see a custom restore image made I think I agree that its not practical to do so for every build they make. With the volume of choices they have in parts and configurations its not like they can burn image 4 and send it out. You are bascially expecting them to make custom images for every system they make since every system can be wildly different. I didnt get a restore disc with my build and while I was a bit disappointed when I talked with Misha about it I realized how difficult that process can be with so many choices. Now if they wanted (and I think they might ) to start charging a premium for custom restore discs would that be a bad thing? It does take time and manpower to make a custom image.

Jason Wall,this is exactly what happened to me.I have no reason to make false statements about anyone or a company.Perhaps he thought it was in my best interests not to sell me that system, but how do you explain the fact he did not call me back the second time.

I had researched the firm on Reseller Ratings and found very positive remarks about them.I will say this the second time I called the person I talked to was quite helpful in suggesting components however I did not get all the information I needed to make a decision before he took the other call.

kodan said:

You know even though I tend to be an AVAdirect cheerleader here I honestly believe you guys were fairly unfair in this case. You didnt order things you complained about functionality wise. Kinda hard for them to make it do things you didnt pay for or ask for it to do. Kinda like even mentioning the case issue when you werent paying enough attention to see that you hadnt ordered what you thought you had.

I dont agree with the whole restore disc issues. While it would be nice to see a custom restore image made I think I agree that its not practical to do so for every build they make. With the volume of choices they have in parts and configurations its not like they can burn image 4 and send it out. You are bascially expecting them to make custom images for every system they make since every system can be wildly different. I didnt get a restore disc with my build and while I was a bit disappointed when I talked with Misha about it I realized how difficult that process can be with so many choices. Now if they wanted (and I think they might ) to start charging a premium for custom restore discs would that be a bad thing? It does take time and manpower to make a custom image.

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Fairly unfair - awesome.

Thanks for your thoughts. As I said above, they were NOT penalized for the HTPC-based hardware present or not present in the build - they WERE penalized for a lack of offerings in the configurator. Even this, though, was not a heavy penalty. It was more of an advisory to them to offer configurations that are more functional.

It's really not that difficult to burn an image using Norton Ghost or IMAGE. It takes little time, almost no money (except perhaps licensing fees), and very little effort. In exchange, the consumer has the perfect fall-back solution.

rico34 said:

Jason Wall,this is exactly what happened to me.I have no reason to make false statements about anyone or a company.Perhaps he thought it was in my best interests not to sell me that system, but how do you explain the fact he did not call me back the second time.

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If you have the rep's name, I can see to it that this issue is addressed. Good service is very important to Misha and he will want to know about this. Please give me his name in a PM.

Jason_Wall said:

Equipping an HTPC without S/PDIF sound in this day and age is almost a crime - there was also a bit taken off for this.

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They do offer sound cards (and other motherboards) with optical out. I'd blame this mostly on the choice of a Creative X-Fi without it's addon expansion unit (since you decided to get a X-Fi in an HTPC anyway... )

Now I do understand the motherboard was, of course, not the one you ordered nor even the one you agreed on after the first one was determined to be incompatible, and the original may have had an optical out. However, the question would arise as to whether an optical out was specifically requested when going over the specs of the first replacement motherboard.

(And why doesn't your stereo system have a Coax S/PDIF in?)

Then regarding the HDTV recording (lack of) capabilities , it should be pointed out that the other cards that DID offer HDTV were actually less expensive than the Hauppage. Sure, some didn't include a remote, but you didn't use the Hauppage's remote anyway.

TLR version, I think the review was hampered by component choice: attempting to build a gaming computer that happened to hook up to a home theater, as opposed to building an HTPC that could play some games. With the price tag you managed to get it up to I'd have expected to see this review under the [H] Enthusiast logo.

Jaquile said:

(And why doesn't your stereo system have a Coax S/PDIF in?)

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It does have Coax in. The problem is that if you prefer one or the other, you are out of luck. With our ordered configuration, you HAVE to use coax to get surround sound from the unit.

So... wait. Let me get this straight. The reviewer's audio receiver had coax S/PDIF input. Your ordered configuration had coax S/PDIF output. The reviewer gripped about a lack of optical S/PDIF output AND went out and bought a coax to optical converter instead of just hooking it up?

Jaquile said:

So... wait. Let me get this straight. The reviewer's audio receiver had coax S/PDIF input. Your ordered configuration had coax S/PDIF output. The reviewer gripped about a lack of optical S/PDIF output AND went out and bought a coax to optical converter instead of just hooking it up?

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Here's the breakdown: There is a "multi-jack" on the X-Fi card that is not only a normal speaker out, but will also double as a S/PDIF out. The "multi-jack" is a 3.5mm plug, which is too small for the normal coax connection.

Our receiver has both Optical and Coax inputs, however optical is what we use for most external devices, and the coax used for our set-top DVD player. Out optical cable came with an adapter that allows it to plug into a 3.5mm jack if it supports Optical Out. We tried plugging it up that way, but of course it didn't work. So in order to get the surround to work, we had to run to an electronics store and purchase a coax adapter that takes the normal jack and converts it to allow us to be able to plug it in to that 3.5mm jack.

Since our coax cable was plugged into the set-top DVD player, the cable itself was running through everything we use to keep our home theater setup in order, so we had to pull it though so that we could plug it into the machine. The optical was there and ready to go, but we had to modify our home theater setup to get that coax cable plugged in. It was a hassle.

Why why why do you guys have such a hard time with World of warcraft and it settings?
lol! You left Vsync enabled and at the same time leaving the refreshrate left at 60mhz.

Didn't you guys promise in the last review(gateway review) that you would disable the vsync?

lol First it was the level of detail, that is fixed then it vsync, but that isn't fixed and the refreshrate is also lowered.

I don't know what I'm going to do with you guys when it comes to benchmarking for world of warcraft.

Noliving said:

Why why why do you guys have such a hard time with World of warcraft and it settings?
lol! You left Vsync enabled and at the same time leaving the refreshrate left at 60mhz.

Didn't you guys promise in the last review(gateway review) that you would disable the vsync?

lol First it was the level of detail, that is fixed then it vsync, but that isn't fixed and the refreshrate is also lowered.

I don't know what I'm going to do with you guys when it comes to benchmarking for world of warcraft.

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Calm down - Vsync is automatically selected when the game starts up. It's really only a precaution that we take to disable it. Some games interfere with FRAPS capturing the framerates - others don't. In this case, it did not. We still disable it by default for good measure, but if there was a problem, we would have seen it in the capture data.

The refresh rate does not affect framerate.

Noliving said:

Why why why do you guys have such a hard time with World of warcraft and it settings?
lol! You left Vsync enabled and at the same time leaving the refreshrate left at 60mhz.

Didn't you guys promise in the last review(gateway review) that you would disable the vsync?

lol First it was the level of detail, that is fixed then it vsync, but that isn't fixed and the refreshrate is also lowered.

I don't know what I'm going to do with you guys when it comes to benchmarking for world of warcraft.

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You've posted complaints about WoW benchmarking in every damn review I've read on H...vidcard or system editorial. Settle down chief.

Jason_Wall said:

Calm down - Vsync is automatically selected when the game starts up. It's really only a precaution that we take to disable it. Some games interfere with FRAPS capturing the framerates - others don't. In this case, it did not. We still disable it by default for good measure, but if there was a problem, we would have seen it in the capture data.

The refresh rate does not affect framerate.

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I am calmed down I just think it is funny. That is why I have the lol in the post.

Refresh rate does affect the framerate if Vsync is enabled. Refresh rate determines what the max number of fps can or is when Vsync is enabled.

Interestingly enough, I do believe you're correct on that point. Our average framerate was 59.9, which in and of itself is not at all conspicuous. But the fact that Vsync was enabled and we had a refresh rate selected, looking back at the raw data, it definitely appeared to affect the framerate capture.

Good call, sir!

Refresh rate 'lock' with Vsync enabled is what actually caps framerates. EG using Re-Force of powerstrip, ATI tool etc.. or by doing it within the drivers -- which most gamers do (or have enabled). Just fire up CoD and have re-force locked at 75 Htz and watch as your frame rate never goes above 75. Disable Vsync and watch it jump to 150- 250 FPS.