Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

About 6 months ago I purchased a Zotac Zbox to serve as a secondary htpc.  I have a fairly large movie library and I wanted to access that library and stream Netflix to my 40 inch LCD I have in my den.  Instead of buying a media streamer like the Roku, I wanted the full media center experience, preferably something that used little power while idling and could still run 1080p movies.

An Ion based nettop seemed like an obvious choice.  I started to research the different brands and price points.  I settled on the Zotac Zboxmainly becuase it was the cheapest nettop I could find.

While at first glance, the Zbox looks like a great HTPC, it has some major flaws (like all nettops.  Here are the dealbreakers for me:

1. Too noisy.  The fan is surprising loud.
2. Runs hot. Very hot.
3. Sluggish Media Center responsiveness
4. Lack of integrated IR receiver

After trying it out for 6 months, I have decided to put the unit on Ebay and get something alittle more powerful and alittle less noisy.  One thing I cannot stand with the unit is that the Windows Media Center menus are really slow on the Zbox, Media Browser especially.  The system hangs on my large movie library and can take almost 10 seconds to start up Media Browser.  This does not seem like a big deal but those 10 seconds are enough to hinder the movie watching experience. The unit does get bogged down if you accidentally leave a movie running while navigating to another menu item.

If you are looking for a small form factor HTPC, the Zotac Zbox is not right for you.  The system performance is too sluggish, noisy, and runs hot.

Before I sell it, I might give Boxee a try and see how it performs.