lcd touch screen htpc factory

Like many computer enthusiasts, I’m an early adopter. At the turn of the millennium, I decided to construct a home theater PC (HTPC)--before Windows Media Center Edition was readily available as a standalone product. Armed with AMD’s Remote Wonder, a Radeon 7500 with an S-video output, some game controllers, and a DVD-ROM drive, my HTPC was tasked to play DVDs, music, and PC games on the 27" TV in my living room.

The experiment technically "worked"–it played movies, music, and games and I could even play the PC version of TOCA race driver in split-screen mode. However, the system was not very user-friendly and I got tired of explaining and re-explaining how to operate it to my family. It was also a little buggy and temperamental, while frankly yesteryear’s CRT televisions weren’t really capable of making even the low 640x480 resolution look readable. While it was technically an HTPC that could do the job, in reality it was still just a PC attached to my television.

Here we are, almost a decade later, and in the last few years high-resolution LCD and plasma televisions have proliferated extremely quickly. More and more folks are even running dedicated home-theater rooms with HD projectors. In addition, Windows Media Center offers the PC a truly user-friendly interface that even my wife–who is not very tech-savvy–and children can use. Between modern graphics cards being able to offer sublime image quality on HD playback and my desire to try out the latest PC games on my HDTV, I believe the HTPC’s heyday might have just arrived.

It"s certainly not 2002 anymore, and there are a lot more case options than beige-on-beige. In fact, there are a seemingly infinite number of unique and interesting HTPC cases available. Notably, we"ve seen a number of cases offering an integrated LCD touch screen that have both user-interface functionality as well as information-delivery. But are these cases well-optioned, well-built platforms for the serious home enthusiast? Are they worth their substantial price premium over an HTPC case without an LCD display? Or are they just a flashy case with a pretty face?

Let’s find out by taking a hard look at three HTPC cases with integrated LCD touch screens: the Moneual 972, the SilverStone CW03, and the Thermaltake DH102. All three offer full ATX compatibility, iMedian HD media player software, a handy IR remote, and a 7" LCD touch screen.

This full size chassis with touch screen is 174mm (6.9") high. It is made from extruded, brushed aluminum with four round corners finished by sandblasting. Screw less cover in all chassis, kept in place by magnets. This chassis accommodates four 3.5" HD and one standard optical drive. 7" touch screen LCD ads nice look and very convenient operation, however it works with Soundgraph FingerUI software only. For more information about FingerUI software please look

This full size chassis with touch screen is 174mm (6.9") high. It is made from extruded, brushed aluminum with four round corners finished by sandblasting. Screw less cover in all chassis, kept in place by magnets. This chassis accommodates four 3.5" HD and one standard optical drive. 7" touch screen LCD ads nice look and very convenient operation, however it works with Soundgraph FingerUI software only. For more information about FingerUI software please look

Most HTPC-Cases are…mostly crap. Either they have a form-factor, which isn’t usable at all in common living-room-configurations or they are missing some major features you would expect from a HTPC.

Whatever, this shall not be the topic here. Instead we’re fetching a case, which features most of our requirements, and add a ‚useful‘ LCD-setup to it.

(If you have your HTPC Setup already completed with LCDd running and just seeking for the XBMC/Kodi integration, you might want to skip some lines here…)

First of: Forget about cases with integrated LCDs. They are usually crap. On the one hand they are ridiculously expensive for no reason, and on the other hand they only offer a very limited set of features and mostly require some specific windows-software. which never gets updated, and is will be usually incompatible with the next release of Windows, even if you tend to use the Microsoft-OS for a mediacenter-computer.

Instead, why not go the originally inteded ‚default‘ way? Long, long time ago there was a LCD-driver-chipset which was cheap, widely available, able to drive character-display with up to 80 characters in almost every configuration of lines and quickly become the de-facto-standard for displays in industry-applications. I am of couse talking about the Hitachi HD44780-Chipset. While no longer produced by Hitachi itself, tons of compatible chipsets are out there. Just grep Ebay for HD44780, and you will see they’re very affordable. Therefore you are able to get this easy-to-use and well-documented displays beginning at 2$. Much less than the extra value a case with a much more crappy display would cost you. The only thing you should care about is to get one with backlight, because this is optional, but most displays nowadays do have integrated backlight.

I got myself a neat case (and i really do not remember where i got this nor what model it is), which was really cheap and cost me something around 30 euros, which is of course quite affordable compared to the heavily overpriced HTPC cases.

Next comes the display. While there are many color/backlight-color variations available, there are some defaults regarding the size. They are given in the following sheme : 20×4 or 2004 , in this case meaning „4 lines with 20 chars each„. Most common sizes are 16×2, 16×4, 20×2 and 20×4. But much more interesting are the more uncommon sizes, especially the 40×2 one. This size is perfect for HTPCs, because many cases are (more or less) flat, but wide enought to fit a 40×2-Display in (and, to be honest: Really noone wants to read titles like „The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring“ or „Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1“ scrolling on a diaplay which is 16 caracters wide, right?).

You shall also keep in mind, that you most likely need a piece of extra hardware to interface the display. You can either interface the display directly if you have any kind of GPIO-Pins like on a raspberry pi (or arduino, or similar), use (or make) an I²C-Adapter Board (costs around 5 Bucks) if you have the possibility to interface I²C on your machine somewhere or try to get (or make) an LCD2USB-Adapter. The last ones are small PCBs, which use an atmel to interface the display and make it available via USB. This Board is OpenSource, so usually not available from any professional manufacturer.

But sometimes a batch of this can be seen and purchased via chinese ebay traders (but keep in mind, that the 40×4 displays use a 2-pin-row-layout at the side instead of a 1×16-pin-line which most displays use, if you got the wrong adapter, you have to use flexible wires instead of pins to connect them together). If you see one of these: get them, they’re rare! The LCD2USB-Project can be found here.

I was in total luck while buying a display, because I managed to find a blue/white 40×2 display with an LCD2USB-Adapter preassembled for around 20 bucks. And it also came with a 4-pin-wire soldered to the USB-Port, so no work at all, just plugged it it on one of the internal USB-ports onboard as it was intended anyways.

Interfacing the display on software side is really easy, on Windows you can use tools like LCDsmartie or on Linux you usually use LCDproc orLCD4Linux. However, the Kodi-Addon (on Linux) uses LCDproc. Depending on your distribution, you may have to compile LCDproc by yourself , because your distro-version is lacking the right drivers for your display, but this is well documented on the LCDproc-website. I will further explain the configuration using LCDproc.

Due to the fact that already a „lcd2usb“-value as connection type exists, this is all we have to do here, if we use one of the lcd2usb-adapters (which I highly recommend). Also mind the driver path. Your display drivers shall go there of course. Restart LCDd and see if the display shows something. If yes, your general setup is done. The rest relies to your personal taste.

LCDproc uses Clients (applications which use a display provided by a network-daemon provided by LCDproc to interface displays) to display Screens (of which you can define multiple and e.G. switch between them). In our case a XBMC/Kodi-Addon acts as Client for our display and draws it’s output to the LCD.

First place to go is the advancedsettings.xml inside ~/.kodi/userdata/ . I prefer to place some values here, which shall not be overwritten by anything else, and also a bit of the LCD-config:

The important part here is of course inside the -tag, the values are self-explanatory. Next, and much more important is the LCD.xml in the same folder. Here is mine as example:

$INFO[LCD.TimeWide$X$Y] I use this for screensaver, so when the system is idle. Assume your display have 2 lines, then you need  TimeWide21 in row 1 and TimeWide22 in row 2. On a 4-Line Display you need TimeWide41,42,43 and 44 when using all 4 lines for the big digits. Once you understand how it works, it’s easy. This displays big digits filling more than one row, in my case displaying the actual time. Valid for X and Y are 1,2,3,4, while 1 is rather useless for X of course.

In general I can say, whenever i’m navigating or staying in some menu it shows me „where i am“ in the first line and time/date in the second. Whenever i am playing something, it shows what exactly is playing in line 1 and a progressbar in line 2. When idling and the screensaver (just dim) is activated after 3 mins of idling, some big digits spanning over 2 lines, showing the time are visible.

One thing is left, installing the XBMC LCDproc addon inside Kodi (yes also in Kodi it is called XBMC… , dont know why, maybe there are 2 identical addons with different names, but i use this since a few years, so maybe it is different in your setup). Most values can be taken as they are, my prefered settings are

I do not want to miss my „widescreen“-LCD on my HTPC anymore. if you – like me – perfer to leave your low-TDP-HTPC-device always on, then you can achieve an interesting dual-use as clock, room-thermometer, rss-feeder, whatever.. I prefer the clock, because of it’s simplicity.

If you find this displays odd and boring, you might want to try one of this more fancier VFD or OLED displays, or why not build yourself a dot-matrix display out of LEDs, which runs with LCDproc? …but this of course relies onto the personal taste.

You are unable to find a simple, affordable HTPC-Case without many bullshit-addons? You might want to have a look at the cases frominter-tech,  they imho have some neat cases available.

The first thing you will notice is that the new XT version has a 7” LCD Touchscreen on the front of the chassis. Once set up, the LCD screen can display much more information than any VFD. The LCD is able to display information such as Graphic Equaliser, Volume, CPU used, Network Speed, Time, Fan Speed etc. The images below are just a taste of the type of information it is able to show.

The LCD monitor really makes this product stand out from the crowd. As mentioned above it can be used as an indicator that shows various information and activities. It can also be used as a second monitor or even a sole monitor, for a completely self-contained PC.

Science fiction has always served as a window into a potential future, namely in the way of technology. But what was once regulated to episodes of Star Trek is quickly becoming the stuff of reality. Many fixtures of these kinds of shows and books have begun to inspire real-life counterparts, including - but not limited to - touchscreen technology.

One only has to look at how far cell phones have come since their inception. Physical keyboards, like those from BlackBerry, gave people about as much of a solution as is possible for those who found themselves doing more on the devices as they became more advanced. Where tactile options came up short, touchscreens graciously stepped up to bat, providing a much fuller experience. This kind of functionality then spread to tablets, which are considered by many to be rivals of laptops and even standard PCs.

While there are still some things that are best done on a desktop computer, that does not change the fact that many users find themselves longing for the same abilities on their PCs afforded by many of their mobile devices. This is what helped breed the touchscreen monitor market, which has many viable options for people seeking the best of both worlds. With stronger computing power and a finer ability to control actions occurring in the screen, users can get more work done in new and exciting ways.

Traditionally, computer mice are what have allowed us to "touch" in a virtual context, but touchscreen monitors are changing all that. It might be said that the reason that mice were used in the first place was because the technology had not evolved to a responsive enough level to enable that natural solution. Now that people have the touchscreen technology, they want it everywhere.

If one thing is for certain, it is that the burgeoning adoption of touchscreen technology is no fad. Proliferation has already come too far to turn back now, and computer manufacturers are taking notice. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the action, including ELO Touch Solutions, Laiputuo Electronics, Planar, HP, 3M, Touch Systems, ViewSonic, Dell and ACER as well. Getting into the touchscreen monitor game is a no-brainer for the companies involved in this generation of computing. With so many different applications made for touchscreen monitors, options exist for all sorts of interested parties.

Touchscreen monitors are becoming the new standard in both private and enterprise settings. Here are some of the ways they can be leveraged effectively for business: touchscreen monitors for workstations, touchscreen monitors for hospitals, and touchscreen monitors for POS systems.

Newegg offers a large selection of touchscreen monitors which vary according to the type from 5-wire Resistive touchscreen monitors, and Accu Touch touchscreen monitors, to Capacitive touchscreen monitors, and more. Newegg’s wide selections will definitely meet your needs.

Just in case you"re looking for something similar to OriginAE"s latest LCD-equipped HTPC enclosure, but would rather the unit come fully stocked and ready to rock, the Trinion L7 should fit the bill. This Korean-based unit packs a sexy, silver chassis, seven-inch 800 x 480 resolution touchscreen LCD monitor, 1.66GHz Intel T5500 processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, 250GB hard drive, 8-channel onboard audio, gigabit Ethernet, combo drive, and Windows XP Media Center Edition pre-installed. Additionally, the company offers up an IR remote to control the action from afar, front-panel flash card readers, USB / FireWire connectors, and audio in / out ports, and the built-in UI provides easy access to DVD playback, games, office applications, photos, TV episodes, etc. While we"re not sure when South Koreans can expect this to land on local shelves, be sure to click on through for a more shots of the machine in action.

The team works very hard to make sure the community is running the best HTPC-software. We give away MediaPortal for free but hosting and software is not for us.

Reviewing a Zalman HTPC chassis seems to have become an annual event in this day and age – in 2006 we looked at the original HD160 and last year we reviewed the HD135.

Today, we revisit the HD160 range but go upmarket with the HD160XT Plus – this version has the 7” “Zero Defect” LCD touch screen and control buttons at the front, in addition to an updated remote control that also doubles as a mouse. The "Plus" model specifically is the cream of the crop in Zalman’s HTPC range – it has a fuller featured remote, and a redesigned front with more buttons to control the LCD.

While other Zalman models look deceptively bigger, the HD160XT Plus doesn’t because the front appears “busier” – the large 7” LCD display and buttons help to make it look far more serious than a simple VFD.

Flicking down the front flap and suddenly the whole panel oozes cool as you watch it slowly fold outwards revealing the hidden card slots, USB, Firewire and front audio connectors. We wish it covered the buttons as well though – just to make it a little neater. It’s trying too hard to be a cross between a functional DVD player and a sleek AMP. The functionality is not limited to the buttons though – the large scroll wheel is also a button and the touch screen is, well, one big button.

The LCDThe LCD is a 7" model which has a maximum resolution of 1024x768, although it has a widescreen 15:9 ratio. This obviously doesn"t jam, and means that the picture ends up looking a little stretched, although a good graphics card driver will go some way to compensating for this.

There is a USB internal header which provides the input and connects to the internal USB headers on the motherboard. You can grab the software to power the touchscreen from the Origen website.

There"s a menu system which allows you to auto-adjust the screen for best fit, change the brightness, switch video input etc. It"s a little slow to respond to commands, but perfectly serviceable.

You could set up your video or audio player to display visualisations or the video itself as a secondary display. As a screen to actually work on, it"s pretty useless because it"s small, stretched and not particularly crisp. There are arguments to be made - for example, you could use it as a stand-alone MP3 player with just the small screen as an interface. We"d suggest that you might be better off buying a proper audio system! If you have a CRT TV, you could use the LCD as the interface for MCE and just output the video to the TV, since MCE looks horrid on CRTs. However, you"d be better off spending the money on a new HDTV!

ConclusionsThe Origen X15e is a cool little case. We like the LCD on the front, although we might struggle to find an actual application that really makes a good use of it. The interior is laid out fairly well with plenty of space, and there are lots of nice touches - like black screws and rubber grommets - that indicate that this is a well thought out case. However, we do have our niggles - problems with the DVD drive being top of the list.

The build quality is exceptional and the design is also slick. However, we do have a stumbling block at the price. The X15e comes in at £465 from SpecialTech which is very expensive. Yes, you get a gorgeous case and yes, you get a touch LCD screen in the front. But £465 for a case? The Zalman, which is every bit as good (in terms of aluminium and build quality), but lacks the screen, only costs £220. It"s hard to justify more than £200 extra for the nice touches and the screen. Even for the hardcore buyer that wants the best the market has to offer, and has money to burn, it"s hard not to recommend the Zalman over this, purely based on the fact that it"s hard to really find a reasonable usage for the screen. Yes, it"s cool, but there are plenty of cooler things to spent £240 on if cool is all you care about.

Along these lines a year or two three ago a new trend picked up we started using the PC to playback music and videos. Obviously that resulted into a certain market demand that demand created new products and product segments. One of the most important developments next to the PC being a gaming platform has to be the slow adaptation of HTPCs. HTPC is short for "Home Theater PC", a PC that is dedicated to the function of recording and playback of media files.

A PC in your living room however has to look nice, be silent and functional; and that"s quite a challenge as today"s computer parts are often noisy and create lot"s of heat. Building a HTPC surely isn"t an easy task as you need to carefully handpick all components used.

For optimal cooling and nice looks today we land at the premises of Zalman. They recently released their Zalman HD160XT Plus HTPC chassis. A seriously gorgeous looking HTPC chassis, made out of aluminum and with a small 7" Zero Defect LCD touch screen (no dead pixels).

This chassis is one of the most feature-rich HTPC cases on the market, and even includes a 7" touch screen on the front of the case. Zalman is renowned for producing some very high quality cases, let"s see if the HD160XT Plus HTPC chassis is yet another product in their long line of winners.

Another company that needs no introduction in the world of computer cases is Thermaltake. Their lineup of HTPC cases is very impressive ranging from the monstrous MozartTX to the tiny SD100 Mini. Then we have the DH series in the middle, starting with the DH101 which quickly spawned into the DH102, DH103, and now the DH104.

The DH104 is arguably Thermaltake"s most impressive HTPC case so far, featuring an impressive 7" LCD touchscreen and hot keys module. This setup is similar to what we found on the GlacialTech Altair A381, even the remotes are the same, suggesting that they are in fact using the same design. However, Thermaltake took the concept to the next level with the LCD screen, and it should be said they are not afraid to charge you for it.

The Thermaltake DH104 is an impressive looking case and despite of its monstrous size, we feel it can still serve perfectly well as a HTPC case. The DH104 measures 17" wide, 8.3" tall, and 18" long, and if you were to turn the DH104 on its side it could easily pass as a mid-tower.

Thermaltake has also done an excellent job of hiding away the front I/O panel when not in use. In order to access the I/O ports you have to push the panel and it will fold down. Behind the panel is a single Firewire port, two USB ports, and two audio jacks. Above the front I/O panel is the hot keys module which is linked to the 7" LCD display.

The LCD touch screen supports 1024x768 which is a suitable resolution for a 7" screen. The screen itself is quite bright and I found it very easy to read, particularly when using the supplied Media LAB software. Scrolling through the menus is very easy and allows the user to access quite a large amount of information while it is also possible to control the computer. It is also possible to check your mail and even monitor network traffic which can be useful for a HTPC.

On the left side of the case we have the 7" LCD display which is recessed nicely into the front facade. Below the LCD is a traditional power button, surrounded by a ring which is used as the power light. Next to the power button is a small hard drive activity LED.

Around the back of the DH104 you will notice that Thermaltake has also painted the rear black. This gives a nice finishing touch to the exterior design. At the rear of the case a 120mm fan is evident, along with seven full length expansion slots for add-in devices. The seventh slot is being used by an external VGA cable, which is connected to the front mounted 7" LCD panel.

Supplies integrated LCD touch display solutions, which will make the process of your development easy. The module seals LCD, touch screen, the foundation hardware and software (driver), and universal connection (USB or RS232) to PC and embedded system.

We focuses on LCD display module integrate touch screen in medium and small size less than 31 inches. Touch screen technology is the most popular form in applications ranging from industry to consumer. It is more convenient compaired with key button control technology. The input signal includes Type C, Fiber, DP, HD BaseT, SDI, YPbPr, HDMI, DVI, VGA, S-video, AV , etc.

SKD modules are manufactured with steady performance and low power consumption. They are mainly applied to various facilities, such as car navigation system, HTPC, thin client PC, panel PC, POS, industrial control system etc.

To continuously increase the administration process by virtue of the rule of "sincerely, good religion and excellent are the base of company development", we commonly absorb the essence of linked goods internationally, and continually build new solutions to fulfill the requires of shoppers for 18 Years Factory Touch Lcd 1080p Monitor - Monitor or other display device SKD Modules – LILLIPUT , The product will supply to all over the world, such as: Slovak Republic, Burundi, Kuala Lumpur, Our items are exported worldwide. Our customers are always satisfied with our reliable quality, customer-oriented services and competitive prices. Our mission is "to continue to earn your loyalty by dedicating our efforts to the constant improvement of our merchandise and services in order to ensure the satisfaction of our end-users, customers, employees, suppliers and the worldwide communities in which we cooperate".