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VIA / ApeXtreme Gaming Console

I have an apex dvd player that i got for around 30 bucks from wal-mart. Works surprisingly well, and it plays mpegs with good quality.

Im not sure if they are doing this with apex the company, or just using the name.
 
well, the reason I would buy one is for the additional funcitonality, if you don't need them I'm sure it is of no use. I don't think the console like cds will get much support though, but based on the specs it shouldn't be that competitive in that respect, more like an extra bonus.
 
Xbox is basically a PC and it seems to have done fairly well. Well its been losing money but i mean in popularity.
 
Originally posted by Wixard
I have an apex dvd player that i got for around 30 bucks from wal-mart. Works surprisingly well, and it plays mpegs with good quality.

Im not sure if they are doing this with apex the company, or just using the name.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was wondering about this as well....Is APEX actually VIA's A/V company or are they just in co-operation with APEX for this system.
 
The amazing thing about this thing is there doesn't seem to be anything from stopping you from installing whatever you want on it.

And who cares about adding more storage. It's NETWORKED, so you can just pull stuff off from other computers in your house.

For $300 bucks, this thing hopefully will sell very well. It's a progressive scan DVD player, PLUS you can watch DIVX, XVID etc. Basically you can use it for whatever you want.

Edit: And you KNOW it'd be so cool to put a bunch of emulators on it to play all those old school Sega/Nintendo games! ;-) All of which you own of course.
 
Originally posted by RedShirt

Edit: And you KNOW it'd be so cool to put a bunch of emulators on it to play all those old school Sega/Nintendo games! ;-) All of which you own of course.
Click to expand...

Good point!
 
Ya, this thing looks pretty promising. But it will obviously depend on how well its implemented, if its really as flexible as it looks.

And I wonder how well it will actually run PC games. I mean, a 1.4 GHz chip and S3 GPU is not exactly cutting edge. Even running at TV resolutions (640x480) or so I could see this thing struggling to pump out a Doom 3/Half Life 2 caliber game. And though most of us would not think of playing high end games on anything but our pimped out uber-rigs, little Timmy down the street may be disapointed that his new birthday present doesn't actually "just play PC games" as he expected. Still, this all remains to be seen.

Beyond gaming, it does look like the first real convergence of multimedia technologies into one nice looking little box. As folks are saying, this thing will rock for music and movies. And I understand the vinyl audio processor produces very nice sound, so it should rock in that field. I'd like to see it succeed, but we'll see.
 
Originally posted by RedShirt
The amazing thing about this thing is there doesn't seem to be anything from stopping you from installing whatever you want on it.

And who cares about adding more storage. It's NETWORKED, so you can just pull stuff off from other computers in your house.

For $300 bucks, this thing hopefully will sell very well. It's a progressive scan DVD player, PLUS you can watch DIVX, XVID etc. Basically you can use it for whatever you want.

Edit: And you KNOW it'd be so cool to put a bunch of emulators on it to play all those old school Sega/Nintendo games! ;-) All of which you own of course.
Click to expand...

I do all that on my xbox. :)
 
Originally posted by Shyne151
I do all that on my xbox. :)
Click to expand...

Lol... Well, YEAH, but...

Uhh... Well, this one will do this right out of the box. No modding etc.

;-)

Plus it's specs for NON-GAMING are better than the X-box.

Edit: And it supports Progessive Scan DVD Playback. Xbox doesn't do that, unless there is some hack I don't know about.
 
I'm gonna post what I posted in the games forum:

I can't beleive they used the Apex name. They're known for making some of the crappiest electronics ever. Everything they sell is always the cheapest version of whatever item it is, and its always obvious why.

I still might have to get this thing though, looks interesting. Are they gonna make special games just for this console and not pc?
 
This does look like an intriguing concept, the problem is marketing it properly. It's just not quite up to snuff for gaming IMO:
If it uses a Deltachrome S4/S8 or some such it should be somewhat respectable from a GPU point of view (at 1024 and below), assuming the current beta driver issues get fixed by then.
"Unichrome" integrated graphics will simply not be enough for even low resolution gaming with modern titles.

The "1.4GHz CPU" is another question altogether. The current C3, Antaur & EDEN lines are not the most competitive gaming CPUs on the market clock for clock, in fact they are more like the least competitive (in a field that includes the agonizingly slow PIV-based Celeron), which could be expected from their Winchip heritage.

Assuming VIA upgrades the FSB of the 1.4GHz C3 to 400MHz (IIRC they have licensed the PIV FSB) and perhaps adds an additional FPU, upgrades the SSE units considerably, and adds a bit more cache, then they might have something worthwhile (for gaming) in conjunction with an S8 deltachrome and a high-speed dual channel unified memory architecture.
Unfortunately, shoehorning all of this into a console box and making a profit off of it seems very unlikely, even with almost everything made in-house (except the hard drive).

More likely I think APEX will attempt to market this with a rather pokey integrated GFX core, a clock-speed boosted Nehemiah C3, and scores of their own integrated components as a "media station" which would play DVD's, DivX/Xvid and audio from a network.

This might not be a bad idea, since one already has to pay near $300 to get a music-only networked appliance with less storage, and it's clear that the VIA VT1616 ("Six-TRAC") Audio CODEC is definitely high quality if implemented properly.

The problem is, since they're already marketing it as a "Game console", this could easily backfire on them when more demanding PC games hit the market.

All in all, not a bad concept, and not a bad prospective price point. I hope they can surprise me, but I dont think they will.

Are they gonna make special games just for this console and not pc?
Click to expand...
It says "PC Game console" on the pictures Kyle posted, and the other information appears to indicate this will be a full-fledged PC that uses PC software.
 
Originally posted by RedShirt
The amazing thing about this thing is there doesn't seem to be anything from stopping you from installing whatever you want on it.

And who cares about adding more storage. It's NETWORKED, so you can just pull stuff off from other computers in your house.

For $300 bucks, this thing hopefully will sell very well. It's a progressive scan DVD player, PLUS you can watch DIVX, XVID etc. Basically you can use it for whatever you want.

Edit: And you KNOW it'd be so cool to put a bunch of emulators on it to play all those old school Sega/Nintendo games! ;-) All of which you own of course.
Click to expand...

I think VIA should market it from the direction you are discussing here. Basiscally I read your post and thought to myself, "Fuckin'A Right".
 
To a reply above ive had my apex dvd player that i paid 30ish bucks for, for like a year now with no problems. No it wasnt on sale :p

A cheap price doesnt nessecarily mean crap.
 
Originally posted by Wixard
To a reply above ive had my apex dvd player that i paid 30ish bucks for, for like a year now with no problems. No it wasnt on sale :p

A cheap price doesnt nessecarily mean crap.
Click to expand...

ditto, i bought one of those $40 APEX players that plays pretty much anything i throw at it

this would be awesome becuase its basically a $400 set top box pc... plus it would be a great way to play around with XP embedded, which is something i have personally been itching to do... ;)

i dont think they are marketing this twoards a "game console" but more of a home-theatre... im sure it can run MAME and a decent NES/SNES emulator just fine @ tv resolutions... i hope it has VGA/DVI out for HDTV's and Projectors (like mine :p)

dunno, either way its a sign of things to come... apex does a lot of bleeding-edge stuff, becuase they are a smaller company they can afford "failures", plus they arnt such a huge target that the MPAA would want to go after becuase it lets you play DVD-r's or CD-RW's etc...

which is why sony, and a lot of the other very expensive dvd players, cant do crap
 
Apex is awesome! I paid $60 CDN for a Progressive Scan DVD player, with all the fixins. They're hard to find in retailers in Canada, Future Shop stopped selling them, but they're good stuff.

I don't think I'll be buying this tv-box, though. If I feel like playing games, or movies, etc. on my TV, I'll throw together my own Mini-ITX box, or run a very long S-Video cable from my computer.

If VIA integrates a tuner / s-video input, it may well change my mind...
 
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