Calling users of Shuttle SG33G5M Deluxe

[Workaholic]

Basically I'm thinking of building my next pc as a media centre style (mainly entertainment use, office - word processing, a little of video editing, and a tiny amount of gaming - mostly battlefield.)

I've read up on a few reviews such as:
Shuttle DVO SG33G5M Deluxe Closeup! - VR-Zone IT & Lifestyle Forum!
Review: Shuttle SG33G5M barebones PC - 18 Sep 2007 - IT Week
HEXUS.lifestyle - Press Release :: Shuttle Debuts Digital Home Entertainment Platform : Page - 1/1

But there's a few unanswered questions for me..........

1) The VFD - display on the front, does this only display items that is set through the supplied windows software? Does it support unicode (i.e. chinese characters?)

2) Security - What happens if the fingerprint scanner breaks, do you have to send the whole unit back for repair, or is there a fail-safe feature (through passwords or other?)

3) a 250W PSU is supplied, but if I was to upgrade the graphics card in future, what would it be able to power (if I remember right my box standard Gigabyte 7800GT stated it needed 300-350W minimum

4) Some older versions of shuttles also have a quick boot mode, just for playing music/movie files placed in a decidated partition supporting a variant of linux (which boots in about 15 seconds.) Does this do the same or is that something I need to find and install myself?

[Jappa]

I have a Shuttle SG33G5M. The fingerprintscanner is just a different option for login. You can disable it.
My system uses about 50 Watts with onboard graphics. The PC40 PSU has enough power for a graphics card. Check the compatibility lists at shuttle.com.
Beware of the noise the PSU makes... For 'entertainment use' it's unpleasent. That's why I experimented with a NesteQ Nova600 external PSU (no success due to incompatibility of the NesteQ) and a Nexus NX5000. Very happy now with this silent (silenced the fan...) Nexus! This Shuttle + WinDVD is great for watching DVD's.

[Workaholic]

Any chance of answering q4 and letting me know exactly how loud the machine runs in idle....

Say if I left it on over night and slept about 5 metres away would I still be able to hear it?

[Jappa]

SG33G5M with default PSU (PC40)? You wont sleep at all... The PC40 is considered low noise but my experience: irritating, high pitched noise! Not worthy of a 'silent system'. The only way to get a real quet system is with an external silent PSU. What is left of the noise from the SG33G5M: a cpu-fan running about 750 rpm, hardly noticable from nearby.
About games and quick boot modes: no experience...

[Greggy]

Hi there,

I have another question about this unit. I've surfed the web and i noticed that the onboard vga doesn't handle blu-ray or hd-dvd. It's not powerfull enough... Is this true ?

Did someone played some 1080p material trough the hdmi connector.

Thx !

[Workaholic]

Hi there,

I have another question about this unit. I've surfed the web and i noticed that the onboard vga doesn't handle blu-ray or hd-dvd. It's not powerfull enough... Is this true ?

Did someone played some 1080p material trough the hdmi connector.

Thx !

I'm fairly certain that on AV forums I've read that you can, but you do need to play with the drivers a little

Here's one link saying it works....
VR-Zone : Technology Beats - Shuttle DVO SG33G5M Deluxe Closeup!

[Jappa]

1. Blu-ray with the onboard VGA is NOT working. You can read about my experiments at digidoors.com/shuttle/
My SG33G5M has an Asus EN8500GT/HTP/256 Silent graphics card which is absolutely perfect for blu-ray display and the power consumption is low (40 W).
2. There is a new silent PSU available from Shuttle: PC62 I have it installed now and so far so good. This makes this computer a real home theater PC.

[Greggy]

I'm fairly certain that on AV forums I've read that you can, but you do need to play with the drivers a little

Here's one link saying it works....
.vr-zone.com/articles/Shuttle_DVO_SG33G5M_Deluxe_Closeup!/5252-6.]VR-Zone : Technology Beats - Shuttle DVO SG33G5M Deluxe Closeup!

Idd i've read that part to but other websites says it doens't work...
In the comments of the VR zone article. You can see that an "angry" user didn't get it to work after having contact with shuttle he updated the video driver and ik worked ! But the quality was not optimum.

What is the requirement to play Blu-ray movie with SG33?
In order to play Blu-ray movie with SG33, you have to have
1. The monitor with HDCP support.
2. Blu-ray DVD-Rom
3. Update VGA driver that can support HDCP and this driver could be obtain from our website,
ttp://global.shuttle.com/download03.jsp?PCI=19&PI=784
(The driver just only supports Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit.)
4. Use the software that can play Blu-ray movie ( ex. The version 7.3 or later of Power DVD.)

Can you test that out Jappa ? thx !

[Jappa]

Of course I tried everything. You can read about it on my website at digidoors.com/shuttle/
PowerDVD 7.3 kept complaining about incompatibilty of the graphics driver though I had installed the correct HDCP VGA-driver. Maybe I could have tried a fresh install of Windows Vista after installing the Blu-Ray DVD-Rom, with all the correct drivers at hand? Sorry even if it would work: I know it will take full cpu-load to deliver a more or less acceptable blu-ray display...
To limit my expences I did everything step by step. First I bought a Pioneer blu-ray DVD-Rom and tried to make it work. After a few weeks, lot of research and experiments I gave up and looked for a graphics card with HDCP-support, low power consumption and blu-ray video decoding support.
I payed 57 Euro's for the Asus EN8500GT/HTP/256/silent and after installing the graphics card Power DVD 7.3 had no problem playing blu-ray DVD's and the cpu-load is only 45% average thanks to the graphics card GPU. I can play a blu-ray DVD and check my email at the same time. No problem.
Power consumption with Asus EN8500GT is remarkable low: Shuttle + PC62 PSU + blu-ray playback = 93-103 Watts... What else do you want?