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Check out our case designs in the Intel Competition

C

cwills

Junior Member
I thought the folks here might be interested in checking out our HTPC desings featured in the Intel Core Challenge design competition. I designed all three BICOM designs (HMS1, HMS7, HMS8).

The front panel is a single piece of laser cut acrylic and all the "buttons" are touch sensitive. The front panel also features force feedback, so when a button is pressed a slight knock is felt giving the user tactile feedback (as well as blinking the LED).

Please go to the Intel site and vote for the BICOM HMS7. Your vote will help us actually bring these systems to the market.

There's a lot more I can mention about our systems. Let me know if there are any questions.

Charles
 
Nice. Are these going to be marketed as barebones cases or complete system with proprietary components? And I assume none of them are intended for gaming (i.e. won't accept any mid/high end video card)?
 
HSM8 is my favorite, looks like it could be done with perhaps a TV tuner and whatnot, and would be awesome with an HDMI based motherboard
 
Without seeing the insides, I can't vote. As much as I would love to vote based on "external looks", what will sell me a HTPC is internal design.

As you can see from my sig, I have a fairly significant box there. That said, it has a LOT of "functional" issues. Airflow being the big one (there isn't any good air intake). I suspect the same problem exists on these systems as well from the looks.

How many hard drives can you fit in there? What kind of power supply can it take (if it isn't a standard sized power supply, most DIY'ers will not be interested, including me). Can I put in a real video card? For most of those I would say no is the answer to that, same thing with tuner cards. There isn't enough height in many of those designs to fit a full height card.

Again, as much as I would love to buy for looks, it is the functionality that sells. Combine good function and good looks and I am all over something like this. While small may be "in", it doesn't work for functionality in my opinion as of late for a HTPC where you should have capability for a graphics card which can handle 1080p output, can play games at decent quality graphics settings, has room for a couple hard drives (2-3 in my opinion even with the 1TB drives out there, 1TB doesn't go far with High Definition), has room for a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive(s), and has good quite cooling. The cooling is always the problem with a small system. Small fans simply don't push the required air without spinning at high speeds, and at high speeds the fans are way too loud for use in a living room (heck even in a closet!). So that means you need to have enough height in the system to use 120mm fans for intake and exhaust (something I have yet to see on any HTPC case....)
 
These are some great and constructive comments. We're at the point where we can still make changes based on feedback we receive so we're all ears.

Right now we were planning on marketing these as complete systems, but that's not to say that we couldn't make them available otherwise. Going into the competition and then reading the comments posted by the voters we realized that we wern't going to please everybody. If there's enough intereste we can easily create a monster sized case to house every possible home theater component you could imagine.

What I can tell you is that the motherboard is a Mini-ITX with a Core 2 Duo processor and DVI. I made provisions for a full size ATX motherboard in the HMS1&7 cases, but haven't tried any yet. I had it hooked up to my 60" Sony through a DVI to HDMI adapter at 1080p and the picture blew me away. I don't know about gaming, but cruising around the world in Google Earth was awesome on the big screen.

We now have mounting holes for one drive, but there is space for another. We can always add the capability for an additional drive pretty easily, or use that space for additional functionality.

I really hope to get some video up on YouTube of the front panel in operation. You really have to see it in action to appreciate how awesome it looks and works. For now you can check out our current video. Also check out our web site.

Charles
 
Originally posted by: cwills
One question...What colors do you guys prefer...silver, black, red, blue, etc?
Click to expand...

Silver I prefer. Overall though they should be Silver or Black so they match with typical audio equipment colors.
 
Silver and Black are more at home in the living-room.
I really wish you guys can make a case of these styles that'll fit a standard PSU and a 8800GTS, with decent cooling (i.e. accepts 80mm fans at least), while keeping cost reasonable. My current case is too big and too plain. It doesn't matter it's mATX or ATX.
 
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