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*Official* ASRock CoreHT Thread

post #1 of 10
Thread Starter 
After the success of the Core 100 (pretty well reviewed, except for the 23.976 Hz refresh rate bug), ASRock is officially launching the CoreHT series @ CeBit 2011:

PR Link: http://www.asrock.com/news/show/cebit2011/press.asp?p=2

Purported specs:

* Intel Sandy Bridge processor with HD Graphics 3000
* Supports Blu-ray Stereoscopic 3D playback via HDMI v1.4a output
* Built-in Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6250 WLAN
* Supports Intel Wireless Display 2.1.
* Standard HD Audio bitstreaming and TruStudio PRO

More info will be updated as and when it is revealed.

Personally, not a big fan of WiDi on a HTPC (makes more sense on a laptop). Guessing that ASRock is singing Intel's tune here (hopefully, WiDi support is not increasing end consumer cost too much)
post #2 of 10
I've just noticed that the CoreHt series information is now on the ASRock website:
http://www.asrock.com/nettop/overvie...oreHT%20Series

jakmal is there any further information on when these will be released as well as the Sandy Bridge Vision 3D models?
post #3 of 10
Thread Starter 
Retail availability is expected pretty soon (end of month according to my PR contact).

ASRock has already sent me the CoreHT 252B unit for review (and I expect other sites have got hold of their samples too). So, expect a writeup to come out soon (maybe as early as middle of next week, if things go as per schedule on my side )
post #4 of 10
Hi jakmal will be looking forward to your review of CoreHT, hopefully the Vision 3D isn't too far behind.
post #5 of 10
sorry to say this bit of kit would of been great but instead its useless as it usees the sandybridge intel gfx chip set.

why you ask, heres the reason it can not playback 24fps what a waste.

How about 23.976 fps playback? Sorry guys, even raking in $11 billion a quarter doesn’t make you perfect.

Here’s the sitch, most movie content is stored at 23.976 fps but incorrectly referred to as 24p or 24 fps. That sub-30 fps frame rate is what makes movies look like, well, movies and not soap operas (this is also why interpolated 120Hz modes on TVs make movies look cheesey since they smooth out the 24 fps film effect). A smaller portion of content is actually mastered at 24.000 fps and is also referred to as 24p.

In order to smoothly playback either of these formats you need a player and a display device capable of supporting the frame rate. Many high-end TVs and projectors support this just fine, however on the playback side Intel only supports the less popular of the two: 24.000Hz.

This isn’t intentional, but rather a propagation of an oversight that started back with Clarkdale. Despite having great power consumption and feature characteristics, Clarkdale had one glaring issue that home theater enthusiasts discovered: despite having a 23Hz setting in the driver, Intel’s GPU would never output anything other than 24Hz to a display.

The limitation is entirely in hardware, particularly in what’s supported by the 5-series PCH (remember that display output is routed from the processor’s GPU to the video outputs via the PCH). One side effect of trying to maintain Intel’s aggressive tick-tock release cadence is there’s a lot of design reuse. While Sandy Bridge was a significant architectural redesign, the risk was mitigated by reusing much of the 5-series PCH design. As a result, the hardware limitation that prevented a 23.976Hz refresh rate made its way into the 6-series PCH before Intel discovered the root cause.

Intel had enough time to go in and fix the problem in the 6-series chipsets, however doing so would put the chipset schedule at risk given that fixing the problem requires a non-trivial amount of work to correct. Not wanting to introduce more risk into an already risky project (brand new out of order architecture, first on-die GPU, new GPU architecture, first integrated PLL), Intel chose to not address it this round, which is why we still have the problem today.

What happens when you try to play 23.976 fps content on a display that refreshes itself 24.000 times per second? You get a repeated frame approximately every 40 seconds to synchronize the source frame rate with the display frame rate. That repeated frame appears to your eyes as judder in motion, particularly evident in scenes involving a panning camera.

How big of an issue this is depends on the user. Some can just ignore the judder, others will attempt to smooth it out by setting their display to 60Hz, while others will be driven absolutely insane by it.

If you fall into the latter category, your only option for resolution is to buy a discrete graphics card. Currently AMD’s Radeon HD 5000 and 6000 series GPUs correctly output a 23.976Hz refresh rate if requested. These GPUs also support bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA, while the 6000 series supports HDMI 1.4a and stereoscopic 3D. The same is true for NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 430, which happens to be a pretty decent discrete HTPC card.

Intel has committed to addressing the problem in the next major platform revision, which unfortunately seems to be Ivy Bridge in 2012. There is a short-term solution for HTPC users absolutely set on Sandy Bridge. Intel has a software workaround that enables 23.97Hz output. There’s still a frame rate mismatch at 23.97Hz, but it would be significantly reduced compared to the current 24.000Hz-only situation

MPC-HC Compatibility Problems

Just a heads up. Media Player Classic Home Cinema doesn't currently play well with Sandy Bridge. Enabling DXVA acceleration in MPC-HC will cause stuttering and image quality issues during playback. It's an issue with MPC-HC and not properly detecting SNB as far as I know. Intel has reached out to the developer for a fix


so its a big waste should of put a ati or nvidia inside of it as neraly all my viewing sorces are 24fps, might and see how good the vision 3d is hope that as a different gfx running it
post #6 of 10
Whatever happened to that review on Anandtech? I have the old Core100HT and I can't decide if the new model is worth upgrading to. I might just wait for Ivy Bridge to come along with better graphics, thunderbolt and hopefully proper 23.976hz support.
post #7 of 10
I think the Vision 3D 2nd Generation would be a far better HTPC -- if it's ever released.

I don't get it, ASRock is so slow to produce new HTPC models and has such poor distribution, it's amazing they even bother.

I'm thinking I might go for one of the cheap new Xtreamer models as a stopgap, then in a year get an Ivy Bridge HTPC.
post #8 of 10
Quote:
Originally Posted by HeatSink View Post

I think the Vision 3D 2nd Generation would be a far better HTPC -- if it's ever released.

I don't get it, ASRock is so slow to produce new HTPC models and has such poor distribution, it's amazing they even bother.

I'm thinking I might go for one of the cheap new Xtreamer models as a stopgap, then in a year get an Ivy Bridge HTPC.

The trouble I forsee with a 2nd generation Vision 3D is that they can either try to get Optimus working on it which probably means having to use the HD3000 graphics to actually drive the display (which they won't do because of the 23.976hz bug) or they probably lose all of the features of the HD3000 altogether (including QuickSync).
post #9 of 10
Quote:
Originally Posted by shawkie View Post

Whatever happened to that review on Anandtech? I have the old Core100HT and I can't decide if the new model is worth upgrading to. I might just wait for Ivy Bridge to come along with better graphics, thunderbolt and hopefully proper 23.976hz support.

http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/i...s-up-in-slides

Looks like a March-April release. I'm sure if intel addresses the 23.976hz, they will get it dead on.
post #10 of 10
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by shawkie View Post

Whatever happened to that review on Anandtech? I have the old Core100HT and I can't decide if the new model is worth upgrading to. I might just wait for Ivy Bridge to come along with better graphics, thunderbolt and hopefully proper 23.976hz support.

shawkie, sorry for the delay.

Our review is up:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4713/a...ht-252b-review
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