ARCTIC MC001-N ~ MultiMedia Barebone PC - €114.95 Delivered. [Amazon.de]

witnessmenow

batistuta9 wrote: »

I was thinking of getting the MC001-N & transfering a HDD (replacing it in a laptop with an SSD) into it that would hold all my media, as i don't have NAS, and putting XBMCbuntu on it or since reading the thread OpenELEC, i planed on using it for web streaming of football, youtube, TV players, etc. as well

Would it be the best option to go for, with what i want to do?

The slim line drives arent that big so the max you could put in is about 1Tb, of that is enough storage than that part of your plan would work fine.

As for streaming of football, if you are using flash streams (most of them are) I found ubuntu pretty bad for them. I would be inclined to put windows 7 on it.

I had a acer revo 3600 or something that had an atom processor and I found streaming worked better on windows than ubuntu. Worth considering anyways

robfowler78

Hey anyone been able to install windows 7 on it. Im still getting the message requesting the DVD drivers thing is there are no DVD drivers. Searched on line and there are loads of different suggestions how to fix. Anyone here got it working on this unit.

Thanks

subway

ive installed windows 7 twice,
once via usb and once via dvd - no issues

Redriddick

Hi Robbie,
I have windows seven on mine but unlike you i have no dvd drive;)
What i did was install from usb and then i had access to get all the drivers!!
You will need a different pc and an iso image of windows seven but its pretty easy to do.

robfowler78

Redriddick wrote: »

Hi Robbie,
I have windows seven on mine but unlike you i have no dvd drive;)
What i did was install from usb and then i had access to get all the drivers!!
You will need a different pc and an iso image of windows seven but its pretty easy to do.

An iso I can get but I've never installed from USB. Strange how some people have no problems but some have seems to be the same when you google the issue online.
I'll checkout the USB method would have preferred the DVD straight install less chance of something going wrong ha ha.

subway

theres probably less to go wrong with a usb install

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/a/install-windows-7-usb.htm

and download a fresh iso to be safe
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

robfowler78

subway wrote: »

theres probably less to go wrong with a usb install

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/a/install-windows-7-usb.htm

and download a fresh iso to be safe
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

Thanks I'll give it ago

Do-more

robfowler78 wrote: »

Hey anyone been able to install windows 7 on it. Im still getting the message requesting the DVD drivers thing is there are no DVD drivers. Searched on line and there are loads of different suggestions how to fix. Anyone here got it working on this unit.

Thanks

Did you try the drivers from the Arctic website?

neacy69

quad_red wrote: »

I ordered one today. I've no problems fitting spare ram and a HDD I have.

I've done a good bit of messing with XBMC with my laptop and want it on my tv.

So my intention is to have this under the telly connected to an external drive.

I was gonna download/rip using my laptop then transfer stuff to this box over the network.

Maybe that's not such a good idea though. Should I just get a big HDD for the box?

Mmmmm

Why do you not think this is a good idea? This is more or less what I was thinking of doing...

homewardbound11

Still looking to set up the vu+ addon to work with the alien 2 on spark image. No joy as of yet.

Also if anyone has put netflix on theirs just let me know please.

Thanks

Headshot

I got this one

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005FYQKB4/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01

Im fair puzzled at having trouble installing window updates

It's really slow and you'd think something is wrong but eventually it starts to update

m8

subway wrote: »

theres probably less to go wrong with a usb install

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/a/install-windows-7-usb.htm

and download a fresh iso to be safe
http://www.mydigitallife.info/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-from-digital-river/

I lost my windows 7 DVD can I use one of these ISO's with the key on the PC to reinstall the OS?

Do-more

m8 wrote: »

I lost my windows 7 DVD can I use one of these ISO's with the key on the PC to reinstall the OS?

Yep, as far as I could see they are authorised images from Microsft.

batistuta9

witnessmenow wrote: »

The slim line drives arent that big so the max you could put in is about 1Tb, of that is enough storage than that part of your plan would work fine.

As for streaming of football, if you are using flash streams (most of them are) I found ubuntu pretty bad for them. I would be inclined to put windows 7 on it.

I had a acer revo 3600 or something that had an atom processor and I found streaming worked better on windows than ubuntu. Worth considering anyways

yeah the HDD i have would do me for now anyway & i could always connect it to NAS or an external HDD later on if space runs out

are the streaming issues just on ubuntu or is it with anything linux based?
& does the browser matter, would using chrome make any difference?

Calibos

Anything H264, VC1, MP4, MKV etc even at 1080p will play fine as they are accelerated by the GPU using DXVA. Anything Flash,Mpeg2/4 cannot be GPU accelerated under linux on ATI/AMD GPU's (ATI GPU inside the MC001) yet until AMD sort out their linux drivers sometime this year. The dual core atom in these should handle standard def stuff decoded in software but will be stutter city for HiDef.

AFAIK.

Wait for the real experts like POG, IKILLYOUSCUM and Do-More etc to explain it much better than me.

Calibos

I'm so happy with mine, I'm thinking of ordering another 2 before they are gone!

I picked up the initial 4 for use in the Kitchen, Living Room, Bedroom and Brothers flat next door (Wired to our house network). The other 2 would be for 2 more bedrooms.

Gonna replace my current 3tb of storage spread across 2 DLink DNS323 NAS' (Gave sterling service for last 5 years till now but its time to move on).

Its time I build me an UNraid server! SabNZB,Couchpotato,Headphone,MySql that baby up, get into double digit terabyte capacity and start replacing all content with HD versions, now that I have the clients capable of playing it.

quad_red

neacy69 wrote: »

Why do you not think this is a good idea? This is more or less what I was thinking of doing...

Just from what other people have said it sounds like xbmc would be sluggish in such an arrangement.

Also - would the external HDD be endlessly spinning up if it was attached to a pc that was on most of the time?

TheIrishGrover

How's it going folks. Got mine today. I've installed Win 7 for my sis on it to run XBMC (She wants browser etc otherwise I'd go Openelec) Anyway, I'm not seeing my Wireless N network. Drivers are up to date etc. Have ye seen this? (b/g works fine and other devices can see my wireless n)

Cheers folks

Scruff

quad_red wrote: »

Just from what other people have said it sounds like xbmc would be sluggish in such an arrangement.

Also - would the external HDD be endlessly spinning up if it was attached to a pc that was on most of the time?

how would be be sluggish? (I'm using this exact arrangement with an xtreamer player)

most external HDs will spin down after a certain amount of idle time. That said i did buy a 3TB segate usb 3 external hd from argos a couple of months ago and the spin down was disabled by default. I had to use a utility to enable it. Apparently there is an issue with the seagate drives that excessive wake up can cause the drive mechanism to fail. Mine are rarely on or accessed so i'm comfortable taking the risk. Bottom line, check the web for issues with external hds before you buy!

Dr Nic

Anyone know if an aldi wireless keyboard will work on this to install openelec?

A2LUE42

Win 7 installed, but no sound coming through on TV. Any ideas what I am missing. And the volume is up on both tv and artic pc.

Private Joker

A2LUE42 wrote: »

Win 7 installed, but no sound coming through on TV. Any ideas what I am missing. And the volume is up on both tv and artic pc.

Change your audio settings to output to hdmi.

A2LUE42

Private Joker wrote: »

Change your audio settings to output to hdmi.

It is listed as 'Not plugged in'

TheIrishGrover

A2LUE42 wrote: »

It is listed as 'Not plugged in'

Have you applied the HDMI drivers that came with the system? You'll get your display (up to 720) using standard Win 7 drivers but no sound. Applying the HDMI driver from the disc will let you go up to 1080 and route sound

Remouad

Looking back through the thread and no one seems to be installing 8Gb of RAM.
Any particular reason? does it only recognise 4Gbs?

Remouad

Remouad wrote: »

Looking back through the thread and no one seems to be installing 8Gb of RAM.
Any particular reason? does it only recognise 4Gbs?

What are you going to do on a slow Atom nettop that requires 8GB ram?

A2LUE42

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

Have you applied the HDMI drivers that came with the system? You'll get your display (up to 720) using standard Win 7 drivers but no sound. Applying the HDMI driver from the disc will let you go up to 1080 and route sound

Have installed all the drivers now :-)

All ok.

Remouad

Deleted User wrote: »

What are you going to do on a slow Atom nettop that requires 8GB ram?

Nothing special but has to pass the wife test so would like it to be as fast as possible. Just want to be sure that it will actually make some difference.

Wheeker

I know there's a lot of love for Openelec on this thread, but for a number of reasons my preference would be to install W7. I found the following on the Arctic website http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/living/entertainment-center/382/mc001-dvd.html

At €230.81 (€204.70 + €26.11 shipping), this would seem to be better value than buying the barebones + DVD model & adding memory, HDD & W7 OEM. However it looks like it is shipped from Hong Kong, so would this also potentially be subject to 23% Irish VAT? At this price are there better options out there for a cheap W7 HTPC? ..... Acer Revo & Zotac Z-box seem to be more expensive..... unless I go for 2nd hand on EBay....

Remouad

Looks like the bare bones is gone up to €199 on amazon.de

DVD one is still €119

However looking on the arctic site the MC001-N is now only €118.85 including postage to Ireland.