LinuxMCE Forums
General => Users => Topic started by: ddamron on November 17, 2007, 02:18:50 am
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I received my Fiire Engine about 10 mins ago...
also the fiire chief and 5 dongles... just plugged it in, it's setting itself up...
The Fiire Chief is NICE! xp auto-installed the remote receiver and I was up and running in seconds...
Fiire Station is generating orbiters now... TTYL, time to PLAY
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Well....Is that stuff worth the money? Do you have a set top box?
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The Fiir Engine - I don't think it's worth it... however, they did a good job of installation... a couple things worth mentioning:
1. The DVDRW Drive has a spring loaded cover, designed to allow the drive to open, and close, hiding the actual front of the drive. When I received mine, the "cover" was "pushed" in too far, past the little plastic stops. Simple solution, remove the front panel, and carefully puch the cover back into place.
(below, I am QUOTING my invoice)
2. The second NIC was not seated - could have happened during shipping... np, just re-seat it.
2a. It uses a M2NPV-VM motherboard, and they double charged me for it... I can get it locally for about $95.00, they charged me $223.85 :(
3. The Fiire Chief: DEFINATELY WORTH EVERY PENNY.
4. The Processor: AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 AM2 - again, overcharged.. I paid $243.47 - I can get locally a Athlon64 X2 5600+ with 2x1MB cache for only 134.95
5. Memory - came with 1G (2x DDR 667Mhz 512M PC5300) charged me $46.29. Price is comparable to local...
6. Hitachi 160G EIDE - charged 135.05 - Locally - 320G Barracuda (also EIDE) is only 84.95
7. Keyboard and mouse - whatever... (standard cheap stuff)
8. Lite-On High Speed 20X DVD+/1RW Dual Layer - charged: 85.17 locally: $42.95 (hehe, same model number...)
EDIT: DVD Burner Model number is LH-20A1P
9. Can't beleive they actually charged me $2.70 for the ONBOARD INTEGRATED NVIDEA GEFORCE!!!!
10. DA-SPDIF SPDIF Optical Out $36.01 - hmm.. isn't that included with the montherboard?
11. Realtek 8139 10/100Mbit PCI Ethernet... charged me $18.91 In their documentation, they claim "NETWORK: Dual ethernet ports. Gigabit Speed" Last I heard, 100Mb isn't Gbit...
12. Power DVD 7 License Key and Disc - $10.86 I guess this is how they license the codecs... (?)
13. System Assembly and Packaging: $88.50 wtf? at these prices???
Overal, the system DOES work well.. however, you should be able to build the same comparible system for half the price.
One note, they HAVE put a lot of effort into the configuration, DOCUMENTATION, and setup ease.. that HAS to be paid for..
I'm still waiting on my Fiire Stations, will let you know on those too..
ordered a 2.2" and a 1"...
Overall impressions on the Fiire Engine:
Performance: 8.5/10
Price: 1/10
Overall impressions on the Fiire Chief:
Performance: 10/10
Price 9.5/10 (really, look at the functionality!)
Dan
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oh yeah, and to answer your question: No, I don't have a set top box I have a PVR cable card, and a few DVB-S cards... eventually I'll get my Starchoice HD set tops integrated but that's another day...
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I can't wait to see your teardown and price comparison for the FiireStation. Especially which fanless mobo, and which fanless videocard they use to output 1080i. Also whether there's a fanless upgrade to output 1080p HDMI (I have a Samsung HLS5087WX). And of course a review of how the video looks with their HW.
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As soon as they come, I will do a complete review. Their stuck in customs right now... I received 1 of 3 boxes..
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I will be watching this thread... I did a quick look on newegg - and it looks like I can put one together with similar stuff (same board, faster processor, same amount of ram, twice the HD space, and a media center case for under $500. Not including the remote.
I am really interested in the fiire stations more then the engine - I can't wait to see what you find in there!!!
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What do you think of the $233 competition (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3219.msg16247#msg16247) I (theoretically) found for the $400 FiireStation that has a PCI-e HDMI card?
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Can't say yet, haven't received the stations.. I know the 1" is supposed to be fanless.. and the custom case is pretty sweet..
From what I've seen, Polywell did a good job at researching what works and what doesn't. My core/hybrid runs VERY nice.. even though it's over priced.. (now that I know what's inside)..
will keep this thread going once I receive the rest.. TTYL
Dan
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I can't wait to see your teardown and price comparison for the FiireStation. Especially which fanless mobo, and which fanless videocard they use to output 1080i. Also whether there's a fanless upgrade to output 1080p HDMI (I have a Samsung HLS5087WX). And of course a review of how the video looks with their HW.
The Fiireengine is a standard Via OEM product... see this for review and some video of setting of the DS700 http://www.geek.com/via-goes-vesa-mounted/?rfp=dta
The board itself is a nano-itx ( http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/eden-n/ )form factor and sits inside the four VESA mounting screw holes that go right through the Chassis. There is no 'video card' it has an on-board CX700M graphics chip. The Chassis is basically a big heatsink and the unit does run quite hot.
We source them direct from Via and we are working on the drivers for UI2 support now. More news on this as soon as we have finished testing.
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http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=B7VM7700&promocode=&ts=related
Is this a barebones 1"" fiire station?
not small enough ??
how about
http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=B7VPX1G
For our kitchens?
Whats next? it just might work out well in the think tank, just be careful when flushing. ;)
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http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=B7VM7700&promocode=&ts=related
Is this a barebones 1"" fiire station?
not small enough ??
how about
http://www.computergate.com/products/item.cfm?prodcd=B7VPX1G
For our kitchens?
Whats next? it just might work out well in the think tank, just be careful when flushing. ;)
The VM7700 has a slower processor and integrated WiFi but uses the same chassis as the Fiirestation. The MB inside the Fiirestation and the DS700 & VM7700 fits inside the 4 VESA mounting screw holes. The case is only the size it is to make it easier to locate the various i/o sockets and also to act as a heatsink
The EPIA-PX10000G is again slower than the Fiirestation but would definitely make an excellent platform from a size perspective.
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awesome post - thanks for the info, been looking for it for a while - waiting for the vmpc teardown info!
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The VM7700 has a slower processor and integrated WiFi but uses the same chassis as the Fiirestation. The MB inside the Fiirestation and the DS700 & VM7700 fits inside the 4 VESA mounting screw holes. The case is only the size it is to make it easier to locate the various i/o sockets and also to act as a heatsink
The EPIA-PX10000G is again slower than the Fiirestation but would definitely make an excellent platform from a size perspective.
Any of those FiireStation or other VIA PCs upgradable to HDMI output with a cheap video card (http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=pcie+hdmi)?
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The VM7700 has a slower processor and integrated WiFi but uses the same chassis as the Fiirestation. The MB inside the Fiirestation and the DS700 & VM7700 fits inside the 4 VESA mounting screw holes. The case is only the size it is to make it easier to locate the various i/o sockets and also to act as a heatsink
The EPIA-PX10000G is again slower than the Fiirestation but would definitely make an excellent platform from a size perspective.
Any of those FiireStation or other VIA PCs upgradable to HDMI output with a cheap video card (http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=pcie+hdmi)?
No... they are too small for a video card. But the Fiirestation and DS700 have DVI out so you can use a DVI -> HDMI cable which works great and there is no loss of picture quality nut you do have to route the audio out differently as DVI has no audio pins on the connector.
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Any tear down full specs of the Fiire Chief yet. I am itching to find out what the motherboard and components are?
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Fiire Chief - no
Fiire Engine - yes http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3217.0 (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3217.0)
Fiire Station - yes http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3250.0 (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3250.0)
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oops. Sorry meant specs for the Fiire Station not Fiire Chief. My bag.
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I just did a quick look on the specs for the fiire station.. 1.5Ghz Via and 512 RAM.... I've built many Via systems and I'm always trying to find great prices on them.. last week I stumbled upon a 1.5Ghz Via mobo/processor for 59.00 plus 1GB ram for an additional 18.00..... and I'm thinking of building several MD's with them...
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Are you missing a few things for the Fiire Engine specs like the price for case and the extra cards that are in it? From the looks of the back of the machine on the Fiire site I see a tuner card and what looks like some extra HDMI cards or something. Any ideas as to what those cards and such are? thanks!
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Not really.. I'm not as concerned with the case... for me, any decent case will do... and all I need is vga out.. my core has the tuner card so I don't need anything except mobo/proc, ram and a case.. I'll be netbooting the MD's.. with shipping I can get the previous mentioned items for 135.00.. not bad for decent MD's...
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and what looks like some extra HDMI cards or something. Any ideas as to what those cards and such are? thanks!
Sounds like you are talkeing about the external S-ATA connections
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The tuner is not included in the base Fiire Engine or the Stations for that matter. It is an additional $89 for the PVR 150 add-on card.
If building your own box, the audio breakout module, as stated here http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Asus_M2NPV-VM (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Asus_M2NPV-VM), is available at an additional cost from http://www.excaliberpc.com/ASUS_Motherboard_Accessories_SPDIF/SPDIF_OUT_COA_OPT/partinfo-id-551265.html (http://www.excaliberpc.com/ASUS_Motherboard_Accessories_SPDIF/SPDIF_OUT_COA_OPT/partinfo-id-551265.html).
The eSATA headers are also an additional cost often overlooked by DIY box builders.
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last week I stumbled upon a 1.5Ghz Via mobo/processor for 59.00 plus 1GB ram for an additional 18.00..... and I'm thinking of building several MD's with them...
Care to share where you found them???
thanks
Tim
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last week I stumbled upon a 1.5Ghz Via mobo/processor for 59.00 plus 1GB ram for an additional 18.00..... and I'm thinking of building several MD's with them...
Care to share where you found them???
thanks
Tim
Probably the one mentioned here (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3204.0).
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last week I stumbled upon a 1.5Ghz Via mobo/processor for 59.00 plus 1GB ram for an additional 18.00..... and I'm thinking of building several MD's with them...
Care to share where you found them???
thanks
Tim
Probably the one mentioned here (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3204.0).
Yes, that's the one...
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The case (from my invoice) was $96.00 w/power supply..
No PVR (I have them) and the esata cables were 26.12 each (2)
Still waiting for the stations...
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They finally came in!
I'm starting new threads for the Fiire Stations. :)
Dan
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***RESPONSE FROM FIIRE'S GENERAL MANAGER***
I am the general manager of Fiire. As an open company, Fiire is happy to reveal all there is to know about our products.
Fiire contracts the fulfillment, system assembly, RMA, warranty, etc., to Polywell Computers, who builds hundreds of thousands of systems for OEM builders like Fiire.
Although the FiireStation is more exotic, you are correct that the FiireEngine is based on standard PC parts. NewEgg is the big granddaddy PC online reseller that buys in massive quantity, and sells with very tiny profit margins of only a few percent. NewEgg's prices are almost identical to Polywell's hard cost on the equipment, and in fact, supplies a lot of parts to such mid-size system builders because NewEgg's sales price is often lower than the wholesale price they can negotiate directly from the manufacturers. The numbers you mentioned being shown on Polywell's internal pic-list document don't correlate to costs; Polywell just uses the document as a check list for all the parts. You can see this because the component prices you mentioned added up to more than the full price. No matter, we can use NewEgg to calculate the cost of the components of the FiireEngine. Here is what it would cost to buy the raw components from NewEgg:
Asus M2NPV-VM 90 3
AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 AM2 109 3
2x DDR 667Mhz 512M PC5300 46 3
Hitachi 160G EIDE 50 3
Keyboard/Mouse 20 3
Lite-On High Speed 20X DVD+/1RW Dual Layer 36 3
SPDIF adapter 10 3
Realtek 8139 10/100Mbit PCI Ethernet 10 3
Codecs 10
Case + Power supply 55 10
e-sata 14
The second column is an approx cost of inbound shipping for each part, so the total raw material cost is $484. You are correct that Polywell charges approximately $88 which includes a) system assembly, b) 72 hour burn-in, c) repackage the system d) RMA handling, e) warranty repairs.
If that $88 seems excessive, remember that over $40 is just for the packaging materials: box, manuals, styrofoam, etc. So the actual labor cost to build the system, test it for 3 days, and fix it when it breaks is about $40.
Polywell charges Fiire 20 points (ie 20% margin) for their profit, overhead, loss prevention such as write offs from bad credit cards, administrative costs, etc. That is actually very low in the industry. Fiire shopped around a lot, and most system integrators charge 35%. This was the best price we could get. If you found a local PC builder and asked them to buy the parts for you and build a system, they would likely mark it up a lot more than 20%.
This means the out the door cost to Fiire for a FiireEngine is $715. ($715 * .80 for the 20% margin = $572 finished goods cost - $88 packaging and assembly = $484 which is the raw material cost from NewEgg).
Fiire pays 3% to Visa/Mastercard for credit card handling. So, on a FiireEngine, which sells for $799, Fiire's profit is $60 ($799 - 3% - $715).
I would like you to consider what you get for that $60 profit per FiireEngine.
First, Fiire has 12 full time people in our support center providing our customers AND THE GENERAL LINUXMCE community support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whenever the support staff isn't assisting customers, they are doing testing of LinuxMCE and testing all the new hardware with LinuxMCE to keep track of what works well for our future versions. Fiire has created over 700 test plans for every feature in LinuxMCE. As Paul mentioned during his last release, Fiire provided most of the equipment he needed, and provided lots of q.a. testing and bug fixes.
Further, Fiire sponsors 2 full time developers who work on LinuxMCE. We have offered the LinuxMCE team a bunch of new code, which will likely be in the 0710 release, to now support HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, which will be part of our new 1080p FiireStation due out next month. This was *not* a trivial task by any means. It required re-writing a bunch of code in LinuxMCE to use MPlayer instead of Xine. And our developers are now working on adding support for HD-DVD menus, sub titles and audio tracks in mplayer under the GPL, which will benefit not only LinuxMCE, but all MPlayer users.
It is true that if you are a do-it-yourselfer you can build a FiireEngine for less because there is a 20% profit margin built in for the system integrator Polywell, and $60 for Fiire. But these markups are really quite conservative in this space.
For the FiireStation, Fiire's price is actually *below* wholesale cost. This is because the manufacturer, Via, wants to sell more products into the home / living room market to supplement their sales into the embedded market and saw Fiire and LinuxMCE as a good vehicle for this and agreed to offer the products below cost. In exchange, Fiire agreed not to offer the product to anybody in the embedded market where the prices are still higher. Here is the same FiireStation sold through a low-margin/high-volume distributor: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/vm7700. Note their price is $1,100 for the same hardware Fiire sells for $799, and they are low-margin distributor like NewEgg. Similarly with the set top box FiireStation based on the EPIA EX platform, the motherboard with 512MB RAM, PCI Riser, SATA + PATA cables is $306. The brushed aluminum chasis is almost $100, and the 120 watt power supply is around $90. Again, Fiire's retail price is *below* the wholesale cost of the raw components because we negotiated very special pricing from Via to target the home market. On top of it, Fiire pays a license fee for each unit for special proprietary drivers and codecs.
And there's a new version of the FiireStation that will be on the market in approximately 6 weeks that Fiire had custom developed to our specs which has HDMI and supports 1080p with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray playback.
Regards,
Jeff Laughlin
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How much will the HD-Fiire cost?
And dare I ask what will be different?
(and will it run on European 230V?)
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Jeff--
Thanks for the reply and welcome to the forums. While most people here are do-it-yourselfers (you'd have to be to use LMCE at this point) and would gladly spend their time rather than their money, LMCE provides a unique product that can be very useful in the broader market. Having a company to support installers with warrantied hardware, support, etc, will be very useful in pushing the installed base out to the broader community, which can only help improve LMCE for all of us in the long run.
-Pete K
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Fiire/Jeff - thanks for the info and being so open. I think you guys have done/are doing an exceptional job!
BTW - I don't suppose you sell to/support customers in Australia do you, Region 4/240v/PAL/DVB-T/S/etc? Your web site lists only about 4 dealers over here, but if you go to all their web sites, none of them mention anything about Fiire... not very encouraging! Direct sale/support?
Col.
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I am most perplexed by the descision to go to MPlayer as the primary media player. Xine is much better designed.
And furthermore, this whole code base is modular, why did it take a rewrite to make MPlayer work? shouldn't this set off big ass alarm bells? This would be indicative of a design that needs serious revision, if not auditing at the very least.
-Thom
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This would be indicative of a design that needs serious revision, if not auditing at the very least.
I'd say that sounds just like what Paul has said earlier, remember LMCE is a black box design 'let lose to roam', I'd figure there are lot's of peculiar coding.
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> It required re-writing a bunch of code in LinuxMCE to use MPlayer instead of Xine.
> I am most perplexed by the descision to go to MPlayer as the primary media player. Xine is much better designed.
> And furthermore, this whole code base is modular, why did it take a rewrite to make MPlayer work? shouldn't this set off big ass alarm bells? This would be indicative of a design that needs serious revision, if not auditing at the very least.
In LinuxMCE there presently exists a wrapper for Xine that has all the hooks in the xine engine for jumping to certain positions, reporting time code, handling playback speed and trick play, etc., and which communicates over a socket to the media plugin and other core LinuxMCE modules. By re-writing the code I don't mean we had to change the existing modules, I mean we had to re-write the same type of wrapper that exists for Xine for Mplayer. It was a lot of work to get timecode out of MPlayer, do all the positioning and seeking and trick play and stuff. This didn't set off alarm bells because I don't think there is any other way; the time involved was dependent on MPlayer's design, not LinuxMCE's. I think the overall architecture was good because we were able to remove xine and insert mplayer without changing any of linuxmce's media logic modules. But there's a couple dozen commands the media logic modules need to send the media player, like getting time code, setting position, etc., so there's always going to be work to make a wrapper for a new media engine. If MPlayer itself had a socket-based control layer, so we could just translate from LinuxMCE's DCE protocol to MPlayer's it would have been easy. But MPlayer didn't have such a control layer and that's why it required a lot of code.
As far as why we switched to MPlayer.... There has been little development on Xine lately and nobody was working on hd-dvd/blu-ray support for xine. According to the Ubuntu forums, you need to use MPlayer: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD Before we started down that path we tried to port the patches that had already been done for MPlayer to Xine, but it was taking too long. It was faster to write a new LinuxMCE wrapper for MPlayer.
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> It required re-writing a bunch of code in LinuxMCE to use MPlayer instead of Xine.
> I am most perplexed by the descision to go to MPlayer as the primary media player. Xine is much better designed.
> And furthermore, this whole code base is modular, why did it take a rewrite to make MPlayer work? shouldn't this set off big ass alarm bells? This would be indicative of a design that needs serious revision, if not auditing at the very least.
In LinuxMCE there presently exists a wrapper for Xine that has all the hooks in the xine engine for jumping to certain positions, reporting time code, handling playback speed and trick play, etc., and which communicates over a socket to the media plugin and other core LinuxMCE modules. By re-writing the code I don't mean we had to change the existing modules, I mean we had to re-write the same type of wrapper that exists for Xine for Mplayer. It was a lot of work to get timecode out of MPlayer, do all the positioning and seeking and trick play and stuff. This didn't set off alarm bells because I don't think there is any other way; the time involved was dependent on MPlayer's design, not LinuxMCE's. I think the overall architecture was good because we were able to remove xine and insert mplayer without changing any of linuxmce's media logic modules. But there's a couple dozen commands the media logic modules need to send the media player, like getting time code, setting position, etc., so there's always going to be work to make a wrapper for a new media engine. If MPlayer itself had a socket-based control layer, so we could just translate from LinuxMCE's DCE protocol to MPlayer's it would have been easy. But MPlayer didn't have such a control layer and that's why it required a lot of code.
As far as why we switched to MPlayer.... There has been little development on Xine lately and nobody was working on hd-dvd/blu-ray support for xine. According to the Ubuntu forums, you need to use MPlayer: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats/BluRayAndHDDVD Before we started down that path we tried to port the patches that had already been done for MPlayer to Xine, but it was taking too long. It was faster to write a new LinuxMCE wrapper for MPlayer.
Hi,
thanks for a lot of useful info, Jeff.... I'm curious if Mplayer wrapper will be able to sync more mplayer instances to one source, something similar like Xine is capable of right now (particularly important for whole house audio, although I didn't test how Xine really performs in this area)...
Regards,
Bulek.
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...
For the FiireStation, Fiire's price is actually *below* wholesale cost. This is because the manufacturer, Via, wants to sell more products into the home / living room market to supplement their sales into the embedded market and saw Fiire and LinuxMCE as a good vehicle for this and agreed to offer the products below cost.
...
I was wondering, if Via likes LinuxMCE so much and would like to sell more devices in this market then why can't they release proper drivers for their products? You know, the ones you guys are getting along with that fat discount.
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Fiire/Jeff - thanks for the info and being so open. I think you guys have done/are doing an exceptional job!
BTW - I don't suppose you sell to/support customers in Australia do you, Region 4/240v/PAL/DVB-T/S/etc? Your web site lists only about 4 dealers over here, but if you go to all their web sites, none of them mention anything about Fiire... not very encouraging! Direct sale/support?
Col.
Hey Colin,
FYI - I'm in Aus as well and after chasing down for some weeks, got through to John from Digital Smart Home (as listed on the Fiire Dealers page. As I understood it, these guys are working on getting the Fiire products in Aus, and I was told they should have a demo in their store (Melbourne) within a few weeks (which would be great!)..
Having said that though, he also passed my details on to another guy, Mario from ACS (http://www.convergentliving.com), who contacted me to let me know they were looking at putting their own hardware together (built for LinuxMCE) to run 1080p content etc. Amoung other things, Mario mentioned waiting for a new MOBO with a built in ATI GPU /HDMI out. Not sure how far away this one might be though considering the current state of ATI drivers.
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Having said that though, he also passed my details on to another guy, Mario from ACS (http://www.convergentliving.com), who contacted me to let me know they were looking at putting their own hardware together (built for LinuxMCE) to run 1080p content etc. Amoung other things, Mario mentioned waiting for a new MOBO with a built in ATI GPU /HDMI out. Not sure how far away this one might be though considering the current state of ATI drivers.
Re the ATI equipped mobo with HDMI... see http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Asus_M2A-VM for Zaerc's experiences. The ATI drivers are well short of the mark currently... the X1250 though with decent drivers would be great
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Jeff/Fiire,
First you guys are doing an exceptional job helping LMCE push into future
As someone that's going to buy and/or build in the next couple of weeks I'll attempt to get some answers here.
I hate to hijack this thread to Fiire but here goes some questions.
Does the Engine contain two gigabit NICs? Your message and others make me think not but the site says yes.
Do you have a date for the HD Station? How about a waiting list?
Seams people are having problems running 710bx on the Fiire hardware, have you guys address this?
Will your stations support self built engines/cores? What I mean is will you release the drivers and or code for Fiire station support?
Hopefully you will continue to read and contribute to this forum.
Thanks,
Guisep
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Guisep:
1. The Engine has 1 Gb and 1 100Mb. (Gb onboard, and 100Mb pci)
2. Your guess is as good as mine
3. Jeff emailed me in this regard. The current image shipped with the fiire will work in 0710. I have verified this.
HOWEVER;
1. MythTV Still doesn't work (nothing new here..)
2. Xine Updates done to LinuxMCE are not in the debian image (new features added to 0710)
3. MPlayer device fails to load (new feature added to 0710)
4. To load KDE, the stations currently REBOOT into kubuntu.
The Fiire image is based on debian withOUT KDE using Plutos' build revision 17862.
and to answer the last question,
Yes, they will support self built cores, you just need to install from their DVD (0704) or download the images from Fiire once your system is up.
HTH
Dan
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Thanks for the info..
strange they advertise Gb NICs but only include one..
They must be ready to ship a new custom image based on 710 given Jeff talked about HD playback for their new machine.
Just looks more and more like Fiire gear is best for those that only want a turn key solution. Wish they would just switch to the standard build with the addition of the custom video driver.
Guisep