3 replies to this topic

[Random47]

Hi i have consided buying a eee top. I will use it as an mediaplayer, play movies and music. I was thinking about building it into a table, and use it as some sort of controlepad. I will connect the eee top to a projekter. Do you think it is worth the money, i mean is it farst enough? In Denmark you can get one for 585 USD.

[StormenDK]

I bought one from Expert, and use it as a touch screen juke box, having hooked it up to my amplifier. For that purpose it works fine. Whether it is any good at playing movies on a projector I don't know though.

It is definitely not the fastest PC in the world ... and the supplied XP sucks (in my opinion) so I installed Win7 RC1 instead. That works much better.

You might want to buy a 2 Gb Ram module for it though. Just remember that changing ram will void the warranty.

[gunnar-eee]

The Eee Top has no video connector for displaying on an external display.
The whole philosophy of the design is that the screen of the Top is where everything
is supposed to be displayed. On some units there is a HDMI IN port for connecting
stuff you want to view ON the Top itself, not for outputting video to anywhere else.

While some think that makes the Top a totally uninteresting proposition I still think the
overall idea of the machine is very good for what is intended.

if you want to accomplish the world's largest touchscreen remote control it is technically possible to
have the Top act as one by controlling other gear that accomplish the actual video playback :)

I'm playing around with a ET2002T right now and think it looks great for some applications in both a
household and out in restaurant environments where there's lack of depth in furniture. The Top is great as a
music jukebox, light controller, hotel reception terminal, etc. Also can be a nice machine in a hotel room actually
where media is arranged to stream from a network. Even more so now with a 20" screen.
The model mentioned has a built in DVD-RW drive and plays DVD effortlessly.
This model comes with the nice wireless Asus keyboard and wireless mouse.
I also attached an external Bluray drive and, part from that drive making noise, actual Bluray disc playback was ok.
I also connected a TV set top box over HDMI to the HDMI IN port. The screen can take its video from the internal computer
or from an external HDMI IN port. Compared to the original ET1602 the screen is 20" instead of 17, dual core CPU instead of single core
and graphics hardware that can now play 1080p video without hickups. The machine runs very quiet. Internal speakers is not that impressive for music reproduction. Surprisingly no more advanced audio out than standard analog headphone jack on the side.
But I embarked on trying out external USB sound cards and found two inexpensive models that offered either 2 channel digital audio over optical toslink, or the more advanced unit up to 7.1 channel audio over optical. This made a tremendous difference. They indeed work well and easily takes away any reasoning that the unit would be unusable for high quality audio. This USB sound card thing works and is unobtrusive.
The Top is not for everyone but can be a cool thing in the right environment. It is certainly aesthetically pleasing for home decoration.

Edited by gunnar-eee, 13 November 2009 - 08:50 PM.

[johar]

I have movies on DVDs. I copied one of them on USB and tried to play through USB port in my DVD player. The problem is i have to select the main file and run the movie. How can I get the menu options and run it like as if it was being run like a dvd.