Antec Veris Fusion Black HTPC Case

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Introduction:

I purchased an Antec Fusion Black case to replace my aging HTPC.
The case looks very nice, until you turn on the LCD display...

The Good:

• The case looks very nice.
• The construction is solid.

The Bad:

• The two included case fans do not have speed monitoring wires, I had to purchase new fans.
  For such an expensive case this is rather disappointing.
• There are two fans on the side of the case, both set to extract hot air, but hard drives are located in an area with no direct ventilation.
  There is ample ventilation holes around the drives, but it remains to be seen if the drives will overheat or not.
• The LCD display used on the case is an OEM version of the iMON from SoundGraph.
  The Antec provided software has far fewer functions compared to the software provided by SoundGraph, unfortunately the SoundGraph software does not work with Antec LCD.
• The LCD turns on bright blue when power is applied to the case.
  The LCD only turns off after the LCD software is installed, and the setting enabled to turn the LCD off.
  I really expected the opposite, LCD remains off until turned on by controlling software.
• The LCD contrast is very poor, and the viewing angle is severely limit.
  From pictures I expected to see a blue display on a black background, but instead I see dark blue on light blue, it literally looks like the backlight is way too bright.
  The LCD details are not visible from angles other than almost right in front of the display.
  The plastic panel covering the LCD is highly reflective and any light sources obscure the display contents.
  The Antec LCD looks like a cheap joke compared to the excellent quality of the LCD of my Yamaha RX-V2700 receiver.
  
  Low contrast setting (text is visible):
  
  
  Medium contrast setting (text is partially visible):
  
  
  High contrast setting (you can't see the text at all):
  
  
• Antec support sent me pictures of a similar LCD in a test system, they do not have the actual case, and it looks marginally better than mine, but still very poor.
  
  Low contrast:
  
  
  Medium contrast:
  
  
  High contrast:
  
  
  Picture from SoundGraph website for iMON OEM LCD (very different to the Antec version):
  
  
  
• The LCD started flickering, I tried rebooting, removing power from the LCD, does not stop.
  It does seem that while the PC boots the display does not flicker, but the moment the iMON software starts the flickering starts.
  Here is a movie of the flickering in Canon AVI (36MB), DivX AVI (4.27MB), and Windows WMV (15MB) formats (if it doesn't play over the web, download and play locally).
  
• I returned the LCD module to Antec under RMA, they were unable to reproduce the flicker problem, but they did send me a replacement LCD module.
  I installed the new LCD module, and the new module does not suffer from the flickering problem.
  As for the quality of the new LCD module, the text is now readable at the medium contrast setting, but not nearly as good as the picture from the iMON website.
  
  
  
• The remote only starts working once you have logged in, you can not use the remote prior to logging in. I am now forced to use a mouse or keyboard to log in.
  The original eHome Media Center external IR receiver works just fine without being logged in, this allows me to boot the machine, and select an account and log in using only the navigation buttons on the remote.
• The LCD would occasionally hang with strange characters or elements on the display. Once this happens you ave to unplug the case and reboot.
  This problem is being discussed in this thread on the SoundGraph forum.

The Outcome:

• Several readers emailed me and also complained about the quality of the LCD display, and the lack of features vs. the retail iMon, I urge anybody that is not satisfied to contact Antec and raise your concerns.
• Due to the poor LCD image quality and various other issues I do not recommend this case.

Links:

• Pieter Viljoen's homepage.
• Antec Veris Fusion Black.
• SoundGraph iMON OEM LCD.
• SoundGraph Antec iMON forum.
• "Antec Fusion Black (finally...)" post on Silent PC Review forum.

Contact:

Email me at pieter@insanegenius.com.

Copyright 1997-2007 Pieter Viljoen, all rights reserved.
All other copyrights and trademarks acknowledged.