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31 of 34 found the following review helpful:
 NOT AS ADVERTISED!!!! Feb 18, 2010
By Bdubslawman
EDIT: GO TAKE A LOOK AT THE ACTUAL PICTURES NOT THE PHOTO-SHOPPED ONES ANTEC MADE OF THE PRODUCT I INCLUDED ON THE AMAZONE PAGE.
FIRST: Take a look at the picture on Amazon's site for this item, On Antec's site, and on Buy.com's site. Looks great right?? Nice VFD display...(just like on the Antec Elite model) NOPE!!! NOPE!!! NOPE!!! Sure, read the fine print for the Premier model (this model) it's an LCD display. BUT NOT JUST ANY LCD DISPLAY IT'S A TINY / CROPPED \ WASHED OUT LCD DISPLY. Why does this matter? Well I expected a display was relatively close to what Antec, Amazon, and Buy.com all advertise. That display Looks Awesome!! (BTW the Display that the ANTEC ELITE (the MODEL BELOW THIS HAS).
The actual display has a very narrow angle before it begins distorting (like some LCD monitors do. So unless you are looking dead on to 10-15 degrees to the left or right. This thing is going to look WASHED out & UGLY at 45 degrees i can see all the hidden buttons around the display and the display looks almost WHITE, the display of text at that point is nearly un-readable.
Just a FLUKE with my model (NOPE!!!) Yes you can make minimal contrast adjustments but it only allows you to go from unacceptable to down right terrible! even dead on looks washed out & NOTHING, REPEAT NOTHING LIKE THE PICTURES! =============
Next issue, this unit couples or attaches inline with the Power supplies 20/24 pin main power motherboard connection. What's the problem with that? Well unlike the cable from the power supply which has solid construction and the pins don't move around / secured pins, this coupler does not, it's my only complaint with the initial setup. So it can make the insertion like attempting to herd barn cats. Think about a LOOSE pinned molex connector but instead of 4 loose pins it's 6 x that, I required two small needle nose players to get the connections to mate properly. Without that it pushed the pins out the wrong way not making a proper connection & therefore couldn't snap lock the units together. (YMMV)...
The rest of the hardware installation was straight forward. OTHER than don't bother installing the drivers off the tiny CD. Go to Antec's site & download everything from there. It MAKE sure to go through the settings & select for it to automatically check for updates, if not selected by default. I had to restart before I could get it to go out & check and YES, there are additional updates even after installing the latest offering from Antec (As of 1-2010).
[[AT THIS POINT I WOULD HAVE BEEN FAR HAPPIER HAVING BOUGHT THE ANTEC ELITE MODEL]] The Display was supposed to be the pizazz the cache' of this item. The wow factor & i'm super BUMMED by how plain & ugly it is. See that EQ picture that they show... NOPE!! Sure there is an EQ, but it looks nothing like that!!!!
A positive: The Remote control's ability to turn on & off my PC awesome!
But lets get back to the LCD screen for a bit. It's got so many areas outside of the center of the screen that light up with various features that you end up subtracting 1" off the left & right side of the screen and 1/2" of both the top & bottom of the screen. [[[LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE PICTURE THEY SHOW!!!) It's LITERALLY leaves a tiny 3" display for the scrolling or actual display of the programmable text. And while you can make SOME Font & Size adjustments. There are Some LONG words that Can't be fully displayed all at once as it tracks across the screen even at tiny TEXT SIZE that's RIDICULOUS. You know how hard it is to read something like that? If you buy this (YOU WILL!)
AND - YES the Image Ghosts like CRAZY. The Freaking ms response rate must be up in the 30ms range it's so bad & very annoying. Then take a small news blurb.. Sure you can sign up for Google, yahoo, NYtimes etc. like an RSS feed WOW right? Well what I can read by simply looking at the news displayed by the software You can read it right on the desktop when i bring that part of the included software up in say 4 seconds, but it takes 1 - 2 minutes to scroll across the tiny LCD screen. I don't know about you, but I don't have 15 minutes to read 8-10 news headlines. That even a 3rd grader could make out on the desktop in about 45 seconds... SCROLLING SPEED + AWFUL GHOSTING = FAIL!!
TINY NOT USING THE MAJORITY BUT MAYBE 2/3rds of an already tiny display = FAILED.
MAX RATE OF SCROLL THAT YOU CAN STILL READ W/O GHOSTING MAKING IT UN-READABLE FAIL!! FAIL! FAIL! Washed out color, contrast adjustment can not go DARK without making the Text go black. So if you want to see the text... that's why we got it to be able to see the display the contrast has to be set so that the screen is way too light. =====================
OK I have the software installed. I start selecting closest city for temperature and weather ( a kewl feature right? Get LCD scroll text of the weather with a city nearby. NOPE!!! NOPE!! It allows for that ONLY MAJOR CITIES. NEW YORK, CHICAGO, ENGLAND (LOL) and just a Tiny few others. Well WTF? The weather is different 2 hours away from me let alone 10 hours to chicago... FEATURE = FAIL! (unless you live in those handful of cities). Dig around some more & now another Desktop Widget for a clock / weather(closest city (independent of the first whether display this is ONLY FOR THE DESKTOP) it finds or allows from my city is now 3 hours away). OF COURSE that city CANNOT be displayed on the LCD screen just your normal desktop monitor's screen. And again only includes major & sub major cities .... Minneapolis MN, Omaha NE, Madison WI, size cities etc. No third or fourth tier cities (like Apple, Google, Windows all allow). FEATURE = FAIL! It does me no good that far away.
No listing on Antec's site for supported TV Tuner Cards. I took a chance so far I can tell you that they DO NOT WORK or recognize any of the ATI All-In-Wonder Graphic / TV Tuner Card under XP (with properly installed Analog drivers Catalyst 6.2 & before & ATI's MMC 9.08 and before). I may also install another boot & try the crappy digital drivers for the A-I-W too.
I have some hardware encoded cards I will try next (like the TV Wonder 650) but a simple list of Supported TV Tuner cards would have been helpful. (BAD ON ME FOR NOT DEMANDING THAT FROM ANTEC FIRST A buyer should always be diligent.
However, this item was on sale from [...] for $29.99 each i saw the photo read what it came with and thought WOW!! (NOW I KNOW WHY it was only $29.99!) and so i jumped in with NO time to wait for responses or I'd likely miss "the deal" ROFL at that price.
The Media Center experience from Imon LOOKS REALLY COOL (when i first started it up) It looks like a movie theater going dark about to start a movie). EXCEPT it won't find any of my files? I mean not only does the structure of the setup menus need to be reworked but they go off in loops & dead ends very annoying!
I'm no spring chicken with Media Centers.
I've used and am currently using six different main-media-Centers on several PCs and dual & triple booted systems. They are the following - XP MCE 2005, Vista Media Center, Windows 7 Media Center, ATI's Multimedia Center, and Cyberlink's Power Cinema, and Snapstream's Beyond TV) they are relatively simple and straight forward, but the IMON software suite that comes with this is NOT? I will keep at it but while the front end "looks awesome" fat lot of good that does if it won't play TV (another card may correct that), won't find & display pictures and Videos.
There are MULTIPLE CLICKS confusing dead ends GRRR things that don't belong there... The automatic searches found/detected nothing. Manual setup pointing to the files doesn't seem to be any different. It doesn't set up or find my pictures, my videos, or my A-I-W <== I give it a pass on the A-I-W's bc they are software based & not compatible with Vista Media Center, or Windows 7 (unless you use Snapstream Beyond TV).
So what the heck did i get? The remote that turns on or off the PC. (NOTE THE IR WINDOW has a fairly narrow angle of reception (Because get this... THEY RECESSED THE FREAKING IR PORT) so at wider angles where it would be able to receive if it were at least flush if not slightly protruding... THEY CHOSE TO RECESS IT, OMG GRRRRRRRRR!!! What else do i like. Well like the old ATI Remote Wonders, you can control the Cursor on the screen & click items, open folders drill down or up & launch programs (that way) from the remote that's better than the Windows Media Center remote in that way, but very similar to the 10 year old ATI Remote wonder.
The remote can be made to run the Imon or windows Media center software.
It's Ok when I have system specs scroll on the LCD display, or when i shut off the system I have it put a clock (albeit still washed out, too light, not black with white text but grayish/white with white text is a better way to describe how things look on this thing.
Except for the pins not lining up or being able to be forcibly (with enough force) inserted into the power coupled/adapter, the hardware end of it took 10 minutes. The directions on that were very good albeit one of the pictures is backwards or inverted but not a big whoop.
The software download pretty fast from Antec & it installed with No Conflict, no errors. Again that's great. But at this point. I have an advanced remote controlled PC (on off & cursor control). Irritating news craws via the cropped LCD display. (that's Pitiful). Some of the other things like system specs that you can put on the display OK that's neat but given the washed out lcd look. Let me put it this way. It looks like a crappy LCD monitor that has had the backlight cranked all the way up on it way too high) and has a minute viewing angle.
OFFER TO ANTEC:
IF ANTEC WILL EXCHANGE THE REMAINING TWO UN-OPENED ANTEC PREMIER's I HAVE FOR TWO ANTEC ELITES I'LL DELETE THIS POSTING!!!
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 LCD!! NOT VFD!! Nov 08, 2010
By Ed
So I bought this unit almost a year ago thinking it was a (Vacuum Florescent Display) VFD, as it was advertised. Even if it wasn't, I wouldn't have been too disappointed, as long as it worked as it was designed. Bottom line I'm not happy with this display, when I got it the display had dead pixels, and the buttons on the unit that are supposed to be back lit are not very bright, and the back light is hardly visible, the nobs are stiff, and feel like they might break with normal use.The remote has a joystick that is very sensitive to touch, too sensitive to be very useful, and more thought could have been been put into the button layout on the remote particularly the buttons around the joystick. Bottom line, I think the step down from this would have been better even if just for the display being a real VFD. Another thought, the software that works the display is somewhat lacking, and would be nice if you could add your own info on the screen, and if was less complicated to set up your own configuration. Don't be fooled by advertisements that claim these are VFD, they are not, they are LCD.
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
terrible software, hardware works sometimes Mar 21, 2010
By MattM
"my mom told me ima genius"
this is possibly one of THEE worst antec products i've ever purchased its sittin in an antec case with antec power and is sorta embarassing i even paid the lowly sum of around $35 for it. hardware: its nice enough to be power efficient by shutting down randomly and not turning back on until going inside the case and reseating the usb cable( how ghetto is that to have a usb connection inside the computer??) the software that comes with this is TERRIBLE. the imon "software that sits in your systray doesn't respond unless its about 5 minutes after a clean boot. oh yeah the main selling point of this is the remote control. good luck the thing was so cheap, the remote jumped around on screen moving an inch at a time on 27" monitor. i wanna frisbee this thing and actually get some use outta my 35 bucks. anyone that paid $90+ should be crying.
Mediocre display, worst possible support from Soundgraph Feb 17, 2012
By Wayne
I've owned a number of products from Antec in the past, including cases, fans, and power supplies. Antec is a good company known for quality products. Unfortunately, Antec chose to get their LCD displays from Soundgraph, and users are stuck relying on Soundgraph for the iMON software and support.
There is a VFD version of this display, which strangely enough is what's pictured. But you get the LCD display. It's hard to read, and no matter what settings you give for brightness or font size, things never look good. To make matters worse, mine has defective firmware and the firmware is not upgradable. I don't know if the firmware on the latest ones have the same problem, but Soundgraph will not stand behind it if there is a problem with yours.
Soundgraph is in Korea, and from the looks of their website, they aren't willing to hire somebody with a native understanding of English. The "font" they used to display the time has a character that isn't a number. It looks like a 9 with a few extra pixels, and they use it instead of a 4. That makes it impossible to read the time. They act as if it's simply a font that not all users like, rather than admitting that it's a firmware problem and that the character is not a 4 or any other valid symbol.
The iMON software works well in general, although the user interface is poorly implemented. But you don't need to deal with the interface once things are set up. It lets you display interesting information, news feeds, and other general data when it's not showing you specific information for an application. It works reasonably well with Microsoft Windows Media Center, although it consistently continues to display "one back" information in many cases, such as "DVD [stop]" when you have left the DVD area and gone to a different menu. That part is not a major obstacle to usability, but would be nice if they cleaned it up. They've had plenty of time to do so.
But the worst problem is that most of the time, the display simply says "iMON LCD." I can't think of any reason you would ever want the display to say that, unless it's to tell your friends which company is responsible for the terrible firmware and software. Soundgraph has claimed that there are times when its software can't tell what application is running, and that's why it comes up with that display. If that's the case, they could always abort and restart the software. That would work 100% of the time. Instead they give a message that's pointless. Even a blank display would be better.
I have no problems with Antec except that they should stand by their customers and hold Soundgraph responsible. I can't seek help based on warranty because I was foolish enough to think that given enough time, Soundgraph would be able to fix their bugs. Antec should tell Soundgraph to get things working, or else Antec should save its own good reputation and find another supplier.
Beware that Soundgraph hardware and software is used with many HTPC cases and the problem is not limited to Antec, so be VERY careful before buying an HTPC case from ANY company until you find out who made the display and software. There's no reason to steer clear of Antec's other products, which are generally quite good.
I give this product two stars when it works, since it's of marginal use when it functions. But much of the time my computer is on, the display itself is a one star product.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Mostly as described. Apr 22, 2012
By Jessi86
I purchased this for my husbands custom built gaming rig *computer*. It works really well and does as described. Only problem is that it doesn't look as nice as it does in the picture. I bought this because it looks like the screen would have the black background and so it would be easily seen. However, once it was installed we noticed that it is actually gray. Kinda looks washed out. It is somewhat hard to see if you aren't right up on it. But it was a good purchase, I would have just preferred it to have the darker background.
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