Hands On: ASRock ION 330 Nettop PC

Accessories

As the ION 330 is going to be used as a Media Center, I needed a TV Tuner to pick up the Freeview signal from our roof aerial, as well as a wireless keyboard and mouse, just in case of any issues that required a quick dig into Windows. For the TV Tuner, I selected Hauppague’s External USB Win-TV-NOVA-TD, now certified for Windows 7 which offers twin tuners to allow the watching of one channel, whilst recording a second as well as the company’s Diversity technology which can combine tuners for improved signal reception.

One nice feature of the Win-TV-NOVA-TD is very simple – a USB cable extender which allows you to plug in the tuner and hide it around the side of the computer, or lie it flat rather than have it protrude from the rear of the PC. Very useful for tucking away into the TV cabinet. A simple plug in and driver download and install led to a perfect picture when configured in Windows Media Center.

For the keyboard/mouse, I opted for the Keysonic Compact Wireless Keyboard with Integrated Touch Pad – this is notebook sized keyboard with a trackpad, solving the need for a mouse – the trackpad also integrates a scroller at the side, which is another nice feature. The keyboard works well, although has an issue with Number Lock coming on, seemingly at random, which caused a lot of confusion when trying to login to Windows!

Flash Issues Resolved

One issue that has been identified with NVIDIA ION based machines is poor compatibility with Adobe Flash, causing a particular problem with streaming video. I’d read a number of reviews highlighting the issue (including Mike Garcen’s highly recommended review over at Missing Remote). This could cause concern, but good news! Adobe’s Flash 10.1 beta resolves the issue, when combined with NVIDIA’s latest drivers. Softpedia ran a comparison of the ION 330 running Flash 10.0 compared to the new 10.1 version with latest drivers. Attempting to play 1080P Flash video using 10.0 locked up the unit, requiring a restart. However, with 10.1 beta, video ran effortlessly at 28-31FPS, with the Atom loaded to a maximum of 25%. You can park those performance fears!

Codec Support

I may be firing video from a variety of sources through the ION 330, so it’s important to ensure we’re covered when it comes to supporting as many file formats as possible, especially high definition formats such as MKV that aren’t natively supported in Windows. In my review of the Norco BIS-6540 Mini PC recently, I was really impressed by the file format support which came from the freely downloadable Combined Community Codec Pack which installs a wide range of codecs. I tested the ION 330 with a wide range of videos, including MKV, QuickTime, MPEG2-TS, WMV HD and H.264 and found them to run well.

The ION 330 runs Windows Media Center really well – menus are relatively snappy, even at 1080P and as long as you have a decent network connection, you’ll find streaming high definition video a breeze. Talking of network connections, I’ve been using a Netgear Powerline to connect my Xbox 360 to my home server and Xbox Live. Whilst the connection is stable enough for music, photos and standard definition video, it’s struggled with high definition video, which is more about an issue with my electrical wiring than the Powerline product itself. Yesterday, I upgraded the powerline product to Belkin’s new Gigabit HD Powerline Starter Kit, which has doubled my file transfer speed from a dreadful (but works) 1MB/sec to a slightly-less-but-still-pretty-dreadful 2MB/sec. However, it’s seemingly good enough for streaming high definition files across the network from the home server, so happy days – I love the concept of Powerline, but never believe the advertised transfer speeds on the box!

Summary and What’s Next?

The ASRock ION 330 is sitting next to my TV, waiting for my Sky subscription to end. It’s plugged directly into the 37” TV via HDMI where we get Windows in full 1080P resolution. We’re currently using it as an extra DVR to record TV directly from Freeview and play music, video and TV from our home server. Once the Sky subscription has ended, the SKY HD box will be removed and the ION 330 will be connected via our Sony AV Receiver to the TV and surround sound speakers. At that point, we’ll cover our Windows Media Center setup, and talk through cool apps such as TunerFreeMCE, MediaBrowser and MetaBrowser.

Meanwhile, I’ve been very impressed by the ION 330 – it’s a small, cheap package but has got everything you need for a great HTPC – and at £250 plus a few accessories, it’s amazing value.