For those who gamed on a steady diet of Super Mario Bros., ExciteBike, or the infamous Duck Hunt, here's an HTPC to bring you down nostalgia lane. The Nintendo HTPC is basically a drive-less computer crammed into an NES case, with enough claimed power to play 1080p HD-quality videos smoothly.
Here's what $475 (no shipping or taxes included yet) gets you:
- Custom Modified NES case with
- Zotac IONITX-A-U motherboard with 533Mhz Front Side Bus
- External 90W Power Supply (Rated 100-240V 50-60Hz, comes with US 3-prong cable)
- Intel Atom N330 @ 1.6Ghz
- NVIDIA GeForce9400M on NVIDIA ION chipset
- 2GB Dual Channel 800MHZ DDR2 Memory
- 10/100/1000 ethernet; 802.11n WiFi
- 6 x USB 2.0
- 1x Optical, 1x Coax Digital Audio Out (S/PDIF)
- 1 x eSATA II
- HDMI/DVI/VGA connectors
- Line Out, Line In, Mic In analog audio connectors.
The basic variant of the NES HTPC boots from the included 4GB flash drive running Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC. It's designed as an online media streaming machine, pulling content from a high-speed internet connection through its 802.11n WiFi or 10/100/1000 Ethernet connection. Etsy merchant melanarchy can install an SSD or hard drive at additional cost, but wealth of ports allows the use of high-speed external hard drives.
The NES HTPC looks like a good package, with a reasonable amount of power under the hood. The maker even insists that the CPU fan is extremely quiet, so the only question is: can anyone build a similar system at lower cost? Fill up the comments below with your proposals, dear readers.
Home Theater PC in Original Nintendo
