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Comment by SwellJoe | Hacker News Reader

The case is delicious. I can't tell anything about it from the article or the company website, so it's anyone's guess what this actually is. But, it sure does look pretty.

That said, I worry that at the price point, it'll be a somewhat disappointing gaming experience compared to a general purpose PC with a decent GPU. Having a high-quality retro experience is cool and all (I hope they have arcade versions of the games, rather than the original VCS 2600 versions, as they were kinda awful), but it's been possible to emulate an Atari on modest hardware for a couple decades...I doubt I'd spend $250 for a pretty box that plays classic Atari games, even though I grew up on them.

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I'll spend $250 for a nicely designed and well integrated Linux-based STB that happens to come with an Atari 2600 emulator preinstalled, though.

You're paying $200 for a nice case and the 30 minutes you saved putting Kodi & Retro Pi on a $35 computer.

Maybe a bit off topic but, how is Kodi on a Pi at decoding high quality MKVs with DTS sound? I have a Retro Pi on a Raspberry Pi 3b, but haven't bothered putting Kodi on it as I have a Zotac Z-Box right next to it with optical outputs and all that jazz. Might be nice to consolidate.

Not sure about DTS (I think passthrough works, at least, if you have a receiver, and I'm pretty sure it'll at least give you stereo from it if you don't) but an RPi2 will do h.264 1080p video no problem. Any Pi, however, will fail to play the newer h.265/hevc codec at anything above maybe SD resolutions, as they lack hardware support for that codec and don't have anywhere near the horsepower to give you anything but an audio-desynced slideshow in software.

Depends on the video codec that the MKV contains. H.264 is handled with hardware decoding. H.265 apparently works in some limited cases, but I wouldn't count on it. VC-1 (WMV9) is supported for hardware decoding, after purchase of a separate license.

The audio is all software-decoded, but I think it can be configured for passthrough directly to HDMI, for at least some formats.

If your Zotac is running everything, then there's no real reason to use a Pi3. DTS passthrough works great though.

You'll still need to house the Pi in a case, get a controller (assuming they'll come with the console) configure Retro Pi and Kodi.

I'd say it's well over two hours over at least a $70 computer (including shipping and handling).

You are not required to have the Pi in a case. It's nice to do though. Fake USB SNES conrollers that work great on RetroPie are about $3 each if you search around.

Why do I want a wire from me to the TV on the other side of the room? I get that it's authentically retro, but...

You want retro bluetooth controllers then :) They're about $25 indeed.

In that price range I have only been able to find terrible controllers.

Where did you get yours, and how did you asses quality before purchase?

AliExpress. I just read a whole bunch of reviews. Not going to do super much effort for $3 :)

I bought two of these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Super-Wired-Game-Controller-...

Both my crappy SNES controllers still work to this day. I only put a usb extension cable between Pi and controller so i can play Mappy on my couch :)

The Atari console comes in a pretty case. I was going for a comparable device, not something that runs similar software.

And an AMD CPU with Radeon graphics. Little more oomph than a Pi3, presumably access to more X86 software and access to the fruits of the labor of the mature dev community around full OpenGL, instead of OpenGL ES2 on the Pi.

RetroPie's fun, and a great piece of software. Something faster than a Pi3 would open up more systems for reliable emulation, and access to x86 software simplifies a lot of things.

Steam Box - http://store.steampowered.com/sale/steam_machines

That's not really the price tag that's discussed here, isn't it?

"That said, I worry that at the price point, it'll be a somewhat disappointing gaming experience compared to a general purpose PC with a decent GPU."

At $200, the Nvidia Shield offers an amazing gaming experience, whether through native games or streamed from my gaming PC. I can definitely see this performing just as well.

I bought a Shield not too long ago and I love it. But the $200 price point didn't make it a simple purchase -- I was reluctant to shell out that cash. I've bought a Chromecast, FireTV, etc, and they all end up being quite a bit of a letdown. So it was risky to dive into another device at a much higher price point. So $250 -- even higher than the shield -- is really pushing that comfort zone further.

And again, I'm so glad I bought the Shield. It's not without it's issues, but I love it. But I'd still be very reluctant buying something even more expensive.

I have a FireTV Stick that I bought during the introductory offer to Prime customers for $19.95. I love it at that price. It does exactly what I wanted it to do, which is provide Netflix/Prime/Hulu/YouTube/Pandora without having to turn on the bigger "smart" Blu Ray player or plug a computer into the TV.

It's when we start talking about hundreds of dollars that I start asking myself, "Do I really need another device when I have a laptop, a desktop, a TV stick thingy, a smart Blu Ray player, a tablet, an Xbox, and a phone?"

I have the Steam Link and love it for streaming games, I just wish it had some official apps like Netflix or Plex - from what I can tell that's the main advantage of the Shield, and I'm not sure it's worth $150 difference compared to what the Link was on sale, with controller included.

I've never tried, but Steam Link can still access the browser in Big Picture, can't it?

Would Netflix / Plex work through that?

It can stream the whole desktop, it's just a tad inconvenient - you have to leave Big Picture running minimized.

Think of it as a pretty Chromebox and it gets more appealing at that price point.

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