Dell Zino HD Not a Hulu Monster!
Colin Dixon, Senior Partner, Advisory
September 13, 2010
I’ve been looking around for a machine to test all the different streaming media services that are springing up around the web. My criteria boiled down to the following:
- Decent graphics to handle up to 1080p streamed video
- An HDMI port to allow me to watch it on a flat panel TV
- As small a footprint as possible as space is at a premium in my office
- Use as a little power as possible, particularly when idle
After some research I settled on the Dell Zino HD. It seemed to get a check mark for each of the above categories and, with shipping and tax, cost me about $550. The only upgrades to the base machine I ordered were the fastest AMD processor available and 4 Gbytes of RAM. No upgrades to the graphics card were available but the machine was targeted for the TV so I figured it should be fine.
I connected it up easily enough and the initial boot time didn’t take more than 5 minutes. After installing stuff like Flash and Quicktime and grabbing necessary Windows and driver updates, I was ready to go.
The first site I tried was Netflix and 30 Rock looked as good as ever. The HD video played well and looked very good on my TV. I’ve used PCs through the VGA port with TVs before and always been unhappy with color balance and general brightness. The Zino through the HDMI port looked just as it should: indistinguishable from TV.
I moved on to Huluplus – my first Flash site. The story here was very different. I watched an episode of White Collar at 480p resolution. The video was slightly jerky in window mode and very jerky in full screen mode. I tried several other Flash sites and the results seemed to be the same. I spent the obligatory 3 hours on the phone with Dell support. They replaced drivers and reinstalled Flash several times but in the end threw in the towel and offered to let me return it. This I am doing.
I’m a little disappointed with Dell here since the machine is pitched as a TV PC. Although the physical properties of the machine were well designed to work in the living room, one would have thought the engineers would at least have tested it with Hulu. After all, it is one of the most popular video portals on the web.
I haven’t decided on a replacement yet. I’ll be sure to post my experiences when I do.
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