• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

The Chicago Tribune Binary Beat Column

Posted on: Sunday, 9 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By James Coates, Chicago Tribune

Oct. 9--I've got a new Media Center PC in my living room, a $900 (with rebate) dent in my wallet and an urge to tell the world what went wrong and what went right.

First, some background.

Since roughly 2001, gadget lovers have used the Windows XP Media Center PC operating system to cobble their cable boxes to some fairly brawny computers with TV tuners built in.

The resulting hybrid PC and TV products will be advertised heavily between now and the holidays because as more people opt for laptops, there are a lot of unused desktop parts in the world's warehouses.

Microsoft lately has made deals with manufacturers like Hewlett Packard, Gateway, Toshiba and others to sell expensive high-powered computers with built-in television tuners running a version of the high-end Windows XP Professional operating system. The new Media Centers come in cases that fit into the rack along with other home entertainment components.

Until now, these hybrid media PCs with high sticker prices have failed to capture consumers' imaginations.

It isn't hard even for a propeller head reviewer to see why most consumers have greeted these machines with a huge ho hum even as I wrote glowing articles predicting that the amazing transformations they bring to home entertainment will surely be The Next Big Thing.

Until recently Media Center PCs have been laughably awkward because they have been encased in bulky black desktop towers that stick out like lighthouses in the living room.

A couple of weeks ago, in the returned merchandise section of a Micro Center computer store, I found a living room friendly Media Center PC.

It doesn't look anything like a computer. It's in a flat black box that looks like my DVD player except there's a huge silver knob on the front to crank the volume up and down.

I bought a PowerSpec MCE 410, a Pentium 4 PC with hyper-threading 3 gigahertz clock speed, a fancy 64 MB ATI video card, a 160 gigabyte hard drive, a TV tuner with High Definition DVI digital inputs, Dolby surround sound audio and built-in FM radio.

On the front and back of the 3.5-inch high case is every input/output connection available, including computer-type VGA, old-time RCA composite audio/video, the latest RGB component video as well as optical and coaxial inputs.

I connected the computer with coaxial to my living room digital cable box and then plugged the PC into the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) port on my plasma TV. An Ethernet cable connects the PC/TV to the Internet. After a daunting amount of fiddling with help screens I got the included remote control to talk to the PC and to my cable box.

Then I encountered the first thorn on the rose bush.

The computer's driver software didn't handle my Panasonic TV set, so the display was only 800-by-600 instead of the promised 1024-by-800. This meant that the Start button and taskbar ran off the bottom of the display a bit and the icons for My Computer and other features were partly hidden by the left border.

This works but it is something of a disappointment and a problem I never encountered in reviewing maybe a half dozen borrowed tower Media Center computers over the past four years.

The clunky screen resolution makes browsing Web sites less than ideal but things like the free Web-based TV guide, the photo displays and DVDs came in fine. A big part of Media Centers is displaying one's digital photos and home movies on the big screen.

The digital display of cable TV, photos and home movies was crisp as cold iceberg lettuce and the surround sound was blow-your-socks-off loud and clear for broadcast shows, DVDs, music CDs and the built-in FM receiver.

The next gremlin bit me as I began moving my stacks of CDs onto the hard drive as digital files to play using the Media Center software that delivers bells and whistles like album cover art and links to the Web sites about the performer.

It takes me about 10 minutes to add each CD as the software gets track information from the Web and then rips the tunes. I only have about 100 CDs, but even that relatively small collection would take 16 hours straight to rip. Boring!

On the upside, the free TV guide constantly updated over the Web is sweetness indeed with features like lengthy plot descriptions and cast information. TiVo-style recordings are made by clicking on a listing in the guide and one can set it for the entire series, a single show or a set number of showings.

It hasn't been easy but I've finally got TiVo, Hi-Fi, DVD+/-RW, PC, TV, FM, CDs, JPEGs, MPEGs and MP3s all in my living room. Even so, I'll have to call my Media Center PC Almost The Next Big Thing.

Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail jcoates1@aol.com. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.

-----

To see more of the Chicago Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.chicagotribune.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

MSFT, HPQ, GTW, TOSBF, 6502, INTC, DLB, MC, 6752, TIVO,

Source: Chicago Tribune

More News in this Category