Zalman HD160XT Plus

Touch meh

The touch screen is a bit of an oxymoron though – you have a high detailed 800x600 display capable of a full range of colour for all sorts of funky visualisation, but the provided software makes the display monochromatic. You can link it to other applications like Winamp but there’s no easy way to truly customise the output. For example, how do you control the EQ display, file name, file size, codec, resolution, sound output and such?

Pressing the buttons activates an annoying sound you can't turn off, and there’s no obvious place to assign them to specific tasks. They do work, but not in a way that really needs them and we don't know why do you need buttons when you have a touch screen and a remote? It’s (an ugly) third leg at best.

However by its very nature, the home theatre PC case will likely sit a good few metres from you, so why have a touch screen as well? Last time I checked we don’t have arms twice as long as our bodies, so, why include one?

Well, there is some virtual keyboard software included, so having a touch screen to replace a physical keyboard should make it extremely useful, but even when we put this or the Windows on-screen keyboard onto the touch screen display it wouldn't recognise finger presses. Windows Vista (Home Premium or Ultimate) does have tablet PC options but they can't be configured with the touch screen either.


We played with the touch screen software, iMon, for quite a while but found it to be generally counterintuitive. It’s almost trying too hard to do too much and ends up being not much good at anything – the saying “jack of all trades, master of none” springs to mind. The touch screen menu system goes round in circles and it’s generally hard to understand how far into the deepest, darkest depths of submenu abyss you've ventured. It's better to keep using the main display and iMedian software.

Just getting a few MP3s to play from a USB key required some considerable effort, partly because Windows Media Player insists on syncing everything from a removable device (you are NOT iTunes you stupid, stupid piece of software – just give me a PLAY button!) and partly because it’s simply infinitely quicker to do it with a mouse using drag and drop instead of the remote emulating a mouse. While Media Center works quite well when setup properly, a proper Media Center remote is still far more intuitive – thankfully the software does give the option of using one but it's still a separate purchase.

The iMedian software works far better with the system, especially with the mouse-remote and offers even more features than Vista MCE, but it's not really customisable to the nth degree. However, the Vista MCE itself is more intuitive but it really requires a specific MCE remote to work properly.

What I can't understand is why both MCE and iMedian software insist on separating all media, so you can't scroll between Videos and Music at the same time; instead, you have to come right out to the top level and then re-follow your footsteps back in again. Between this and the touch screen it can all work seamlessly together but we found ourselves bouncing between "this is awesome" and "this is incredibly frustrating".


Irritatingly, once you move away from the provided software, feature support just drops off – we loaded up Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra for some High-Definition action and found the remote doesn’t work natively – there are no options within PowerDVD for remote support and there’s no generic “something is playing – what is it” option to display on the 7” LCD. This was pretty much an inevitable outcome because everything requires drivers. That said, it's a shame there's no co-operation between Cyberlink, one of the world’s biggest media software companies, and IR remote software makers. Even just stop, play, pause and skip would be enough.

Those intending to spend this kind of money for the 7” touch screen option are likely already enthusiastic enough to want to get it working properly in whatever software they intend to use – even if it requires considerable customisation and time spent researching and hacking bits of software together. If that's even possible at all...