VidaBox today announced it’s new ThinClientV2 Media Extender. For those wondering where all of the Media Extenders have gone since the Windows Vista days – and the question is asked a LOT on the Media Center sites – here is a brand new one that is top-of-the-line.
It features eSATA, 10/100/1000 LAN, VGA, HDMi, SPDIF, and 4 UDB ports all on the back. There’s an additional 1 USB port on the side, and, on the front, it has 1 USB, 1 analog stereo, and 1 headphone jack.
It’s relatively small, measuring just 1.5″ in height and 7.44″ in both width and depth.
As for the internals, it sports an AMD Neo Dual Core processor with 2GB of DDR2-800MHz RAM and an 80GB hard drive. It accepts NTSC/ATSC/QAM tuners and PAL/DVB-T formats. It also has built-in 802.11N, as well as a built-in multi-format card reader.
Below are High-res images of the front and back that Vidabox was kind enough to supply me with.
While their press release states “The new ThinClientV2 design uniquely balances both performance and low cost,” I have not been able to find pricing as of yet so I can’t say if it is truly a good deal. As for the performance part of that statement I don’t doubt that it will be very fast and efficient. It has all of the bells and whistles as far as its hardware specs, connectivity options, numerous USB ports, and even a card reader. While the 80GB hard drive may seem small I don’t think that’s an issue since this device really isn’t for storage, it’s for accessing files stored remotely on an HTPC or media server. My one complaint is that they didn’t go with USB 3.0 since devices are now starting to appear for the new spec. It may have been an effort to control the price though.