Summary: This is a beautiful case with the fit and finish of the highest end home theater products, so WHY am I only giving it only one star?
In my opinion, if you are going to spend this kind of money on a case, the first question you should ask is “what can this product do for me, besides wowing my friends”?
This is the very crux of the matter; this case, and more specifically, its touch screen, is really only useful for impressing your friends. As far as adding functionality or ease of use to your home theater system, it is woefully inadequate.
Zalman don’t discuss what their touch screen can actually do (or perhaps better stated, not do) on their site, so here is a definitive list:
1) Display the time and date are in HUGE characters.
2) Display fan speed, and what the temperature inside the case is.
3) Display CPU load, and the amount of memory in use.
4) Indicate amount of network bandwidth in use.
5) Display the name of the currently playing song, current volume level, and the name of the currently active application.
6) You can switch between any of the above 5 screens by touching the appropriate icon on the touch screen
To a computer geek, or someone who doesn’t own a real home theater system, this list might look pretty impressive. However, as a home theater buff, you are more likely scratching your head, and asking “what the heck is the use of that”? At least, that was my incredulous exclamation after I finally got everything up and running.
Given the price of this case, and how much fuss is made about the touch screen in conjunction with home theater use, one would reasonably expect the touch screen to do a LOT more.
For example, to start using your HT PC for playing music, Internet radio, or other audio content, you will need to power on your TV, which acts as the main “monitor” for the Zalman HT PC, so that you can see and navigate the menus to bring up the playlist, station list, or choose to play a CD in the media drive. This is both annoying, and wasteful, as any of you with projection TVs that use replaceable lamps well know – at $400 for a relatively short lived replacement lamp, I’m sure you can think of better uses for your projector than a computer monitor to select which tunes to play. All this functionality could have easily been added to the touch screen.
Considering that you can buy complete streaming media devices that play anything you throw at them, and that allow full operational functionality via a few buttons and a 2 line LCD display for less that JUST the price of this CASE (let alone all the computer components), it is not unreasonable to expect that Zalman would have put more thought and effort into designing an application that would allow full control of your HT PC via the touch screen. Clearly the Zalman engineers are not home theater aficionados, and they apparently did not see fit to consult with anyone who was while designing the product.
The included remote works with the Zalman case, and Windows Media Center software, or other similar programs (Beyond TV, Zalman’s included Zini Media Player, etc ). BUT it is NOT a learning remote, so you can forget about using it to control any of your other home theater components. You’ll likely end up using the programmable remote from a higher end HT Receiver (Denon, Onkyo, Yamaha & Harman Kardon all have nice ones), or getting a dedicated programmable remote (such as Logitech Harmony or Monster Cable) to control you HT components and the Zalman HT PC. Of course, you could also just keep the Zalman remote on your coffee table along with whatever you are already using for the rest of your stuff.
Since the first copy of this case I received did not work, I had occasion to spend considerable time on the phone with Zalman tech support. The tech was friendly, and made a number of suggestions how one might make more extensive use of the touch screen, however none were really viable, at least not unless you were willing to pull out a keyboard and mouse every time you wanted to switch to a different type of viewing or listening task (most suggestions were based on the premise of moving the control panel of your favorite media center software to the touch screen, but this presents a whole new set of problems as soon as you want to watch a movie, or perform any type of video intensive task).
The Bottom Line: If you are in the market to build a HT PC, then you can save yourself a LOT of money by getting a basic HT PC case. I would suggest getting a basic case that DOES include an IR remote control, because even if you choose not to use the included (and almost certainly non-programmable) remote, you can still set up any other programmable remote to control your Media Center software.
Beware of DVR hardware / software “kits” that include a free, or low cost remote, these are usually RADIO remotes, and as such you will always be stuck with at least two remotes: IR for your home theater components, and radio for your HT PC.
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