Asus DigiMatrix - The Pizza Box Form Factor

Software Interface, HDTV, and the Remote

The UI that Asus has chosen remains the same as their GeForce FX 5200 Personal Cinema card, which is why we point you back to that review if you are looking for a more thorough looksie. Back then, Asus used InterVideo's Home Theater 1.0. The version shipping with their Personal Cinema card doesn't seem to have changed, but the DigiMatrix comes with InterVideo's Home Theater version 1.2.

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Click to enlarge.

The only real difference in version 1.2 over 1.0 is that the controls on the bottom portion of the UI have been changed to have a lower profile, instead of an intrusive looking elliptical control panel.

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Because Asus' GeForce FX 5200 Personal Cinema doesn't have radio support, we were unable to test out the features of radio within the Home Theater's UI in our roundup. However, the DigiMatrix supports both FM and AM band radio frequencies, which provided us this option. Radio functions are similar to the TV interface, but there is obviously no way to know what is going to be played next on the station. Additionally, you can only view a limited list of stations at a time, so it's best that you use the keypad on the remote to get to the desired station.

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Click to enlarge.

Asus has something like a "secondary OS," which they call the "Audio DJ." Basically, it is a program that is installed in Windows and can function as a limited OS that can play MP3 playlists, listen to AM/FM radio stations, and MP3/audio CD/DVDs.

The program is installed in a specific directory because the BIOS points to the directory, where the program can be booted into. The Audio DJ OS is coded by O2Micro, and it was originally intended so that notebooks could function in multimedia applications while power was off. The problem is that it still requires the CPU to function, which is why we are more inclined to say that MSI's HiFi mode implementation in their Mega PC's is preferred.

TV quality leaves us with a mixed sense of the DigiMatrix. Via Antenna, we got a rolling bar that distorted the quality of the TV signal, and ended up being a bit annoying for our recordings and general TV viewing. (Our AIW and other TV tuners didn't encounter this problem.) In cable mode, we didn't get this result, but instead, there was small horizontal distortion at the top of the screen. The antenna problem actually seemed to be a problem with hardware, while the problem with cable is a well known problem that is software related. We resolved this when we loaded up SnapStream's new Beyond TV 3. Even so, we have better TV quality with our AIW cards. It lacks a bit of the smoothness that we are used to.

We actually prefer SnapStream's Beyond TV 3 over InterVideo's Home Theater solution. Ironically, Home Theater costs about $100, while Beyond TV 3 runs at $59.99 and $69.99 (download and CD-ROM respectively). But it doesn't provide a way to collect pictures, videos, and interact with radio content.

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The remote for the DigiMatrix is fairly simple to comprehend, but lacks a certain tactile feedback to its buttons. Despite it being an infrared remote, the DigiMatrix seems to respond somewhat slowly to our controls. Additionally, the remote lacks any sort of a mouse pad, which would make it easier to control some of Home Theater's UI settings.

We ran HDTV via the VGA connector at 1080i, which seemed to function fine. We were unable to test out more features due to time, as our dongle for our projector was on backorder.