Antec Veris Fusion Black HTPC case

This article was originally posted here.

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 DivX AVI format
  (4.27MB).

• 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.