Fiire Engine
Contents
Status
WARNING: There have been MANY on-going issues with Fiire products and support. Buyer beware!
Will be supported by Fiire (LMCE support) / Polywell Computers (hardware). This article is out-of-date and this unit has been replaced by a new product line.
Features
- Software: LinuxMCE 1.1 (KU0704)
- User Interface: UI2 with masking
- Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
- RAM: 1GB
- Internal Hard drive for operating system: 160 GB
- RAID storage for media: 6 external e-sata ports for external drives, or external drive cage. Drives and cage not included. Largest e-sata drive at this moment is 1,000 GB, for a total capacity of 6,000 GB or 6TB.
- Network: Dual Ethernet ports. Gigabit speed.
- Audio: Standard stereo audio
- Video: Via 890 chipset
Sales Pitch
LinuxMCE supports 3 variations of the user interface, as shown here. The Fiire Stations are designed to be LinuxMCE media stations, and use special graphics processors and video decoders to provide the highest quality video playback, and provide alpha blending done in the hardware. However, the video subsystem in the Fiire Station is not available for use in a standard PC platform. The Fiire Engine, however, uses standard PC parts. At present, for standard PC’s, only certain nVidia provides support in their drivers for LinuxMCE’s UI2 with alpha blending. However, the nVidia drivers have some video artifacts particularly evident with 1080i content, and the drivers are not fully stable. Therefore, we have included a Via graphics engine, which, although it does not support alpha blending, does provide better video quality and is more stable. In the rooms where you want the full LinuxMCE experience with UI2 and alpha blending, use one of the Fiire Stations.
The Fiire Engine is intended to be primarily the back-end server, while the Fiire Stations are dedicated for media playback. Therefore the Fiire Stations have more a/v connections, including component video, and SPDIF coax and optical for digital audio and surround sound.
