The Media Center Blog: A look at the Luxa2 LM Series

Here we have two HTPC cases from Luxa2. On the bench today I have the LM 200 and LM 300 Pro models and the first thing you notice about these cases when viewing them in person is their size, they are massive and I mean big!

LM 300 Pro - Dimensions

Height:
203.5mm (8.01 inches) / food stand included: 218mm (8.58 inches)

Width:
460mm (18.11 inches)

Depth:
410mm (16.14 inches)

However they look like really expensive bits of kit. The finish is excellent in Aluminium and the build quality has an attention to detail.

They both have a IR/VFD display from Soundgraph with the usual Imon Pad remote control. There are some control buttons on the front of the case, however not all of which are really doing anything for me in Media Center at the moment, despite installing the latest Imon software, this is something I need to fix.

Volume Knob – Not currently working with Media Center

Start – Not currently working should take me to the Media Center start menu

Imedian – When pressing this button Media Center jumps between windowed and full screen mode

Menu – Does seem to do anything when pressed

App Exit - Does seem to do anything when pressed

The Up, Down, Left, Right arrows do work and I can navigate the Media Center menu’s also the Esc (Back) and Enter buttons are working.

There is a flip down panel on the front under the LCD display which hides the usual USB and card reader ports.

I love the way the optical drive cover slowly closes back up, after you have inserted a disk in to the optical drive.

One thing I don’t like about these chassis in that despite their large size you can only fit two 3.5” Hard disk drives. There is a simple metal shelf that runs inside the case and your two HDD’s and the Optical drive simply sit on top of this shelf. There are no drive bays and there is lots of wasted space inside the chassis that is not used, there is plenty of room to have 4 HDD’s but no provision has been made for doing so. This is the biggest problem with the Luxa2 IMHO.

Below are some photographs I took of these two models, click to enlarge.