µATX Overview: Prelude to a Roundup

Mass Storage

Finding the right video source for our High Definition tests was a little more difficult than we anticipated. We thought of several titles that would be perfect for generating stunning video playback sequences, but each title was available in either HD-DVD or Blu-ray formats only. In the end, we chose a couple of titles that offered very good visuals but more importantly were available in SD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray formats. These two titles are Mission Impossible 3 and Swordfish. While we would love to show Halle Berry's special scene in Swordfish, we will instead focus on one of the colorful action scenes in the beginning of the movie. Mission Impossible 3 affords us a scene where Tom Cruise is scaling the wall at the Vatican, and that will separate the good from bad when it comes to moiré patterns in 1080P.

In order to display those movie sequences we need the latest HD software, so we naturally used CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra and Corel's InterVideo WinDVD 8 Platinum HD/BD . Both programs gave us migraines under Vista up until the latest patches, and we are still a little on edge during scene switching and extended playback. Of course, this is almost standard fare with Vista, but we will cover these issues and others in a separate article. On a side note, we are also utilizing the HD HQV Benchmark to evaluate the picture quality output of our graphics solutions and Intel's Digital Home Capabilities Assessment 2.0 Tool to verify our platform's digital video capabilities and expected stability when playing back various video formats.

Having the software available for viewing and playback does little good if we do not have the proper optical drives that are up to the task. As an offshoot of this particular roundup we will start reviewing optical drives again at AnandTech in the near future. In the meantime, our HD capable test drives consisted of the Plextor PX-B900A , Toshiba SD-H802A , and Pioneer BDC-S02BK . Our standard DVD playback drive is the Lite-On LH-20A1P and we might even throw in a playback comparison between the Toshiba SD-H802A HD-DVD drive and the Microsoft Xbox 360 HD DVD Player. Unfortunately, we were hoping to receive the Toshiba SD-H903A HD-DVD writer to compare directly to the new low cost Pioneer BDC-S02BK Blu-ray writer but our sample has been delayed. However, we should receive it in time for the optical drive reviews.

While we are on the subject of storage, it turned out one of the most difficult choices we had to make was choosing what hard drive to utilize. In keeping with our silent and inexpensive theme we settled on the Samsung SpinPoint T166 500GB for our standard test bed. That said, we wanted to try something a little different for our featured HTPC buildup and selected the Seagate DB35.3 750GB hard drive that is designed for DVR-specific challenges such as power consumption, video streaming performance, acoustics, and long term reliability. For those that like to throw caution to the wind, we also will be testing two of the Seagate DB35.3 500GB drives in RAID 0 and RAID 1 to see how well they perform against our standard Samsung T166 500GB in video specific testing. As if that's not enough, we also have the Seagate SV35.2 500GB drive engineered specifically for use in digital video surveillance systems. Not to be left out, Western Digital is trying their hardest to get us production level GreenPower hard drives for our home office platform buildup and Hitachi has promised a CinemaStar 7K1000 for our HTPC buildup. (Ed: Did we mention the Feature Creep yet?)