A computer in the living room? Madness! Computers are big and noisy. They aren't reliable, they aren't remote-controllable, and they can't even handle high-def. Keep them the hell away from my media room!

Yes, yes, you may know all those arguments, too. But if you've never considered putting a PC in your media room, think again. For one thing, it totally fits with our modern, multitasking lifestyles. We're always doing several things at once: checking e-mail, surfing the Web, editing photos, all while watching our favorite TV shows. And besides shifting those common home-office tasks to your living space, today's new generation of Windows Vista PCs — with their massive hard drives and sophisticated Windows Media Center interfaces — are the perfect vault for storing and accessing all your media.

One company that has embraced this concept with both arms is S1Digital. Its new FX Edition Media Center is a custom-designed, Vista-based Media Center PC built for the high-definition living room from the ground up. And while Windows Media Center PCs are nothing new, the FX is among the first dedicated entertainment servers to take advantage of Vista's ability to support a CableCARD high-def tuner. At least in theory, this not only means you can store and play back all your photos, music, and movies, but you can also record shows in high-def directly off your cable service. (Previous Media Center PCs have been restricted to off-air recording of high-def channels.) To sweeten the pot, S1Digital even stocks the FX with a dual-format HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc drive, eliminating any format-war woes.

The Short Form
Price $6,148 / s1digital.com / 888-632-6897
Snapshot
Ultra-quiet operation, a dual-format high-def disc drive, and a slick interface offset the occasional Vista quirkiness in this high-end living-room PC.
Plus
•Simple-to-use interface
•Terrific channel-guide options
•Support for both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc
•Whisper-quiet
Minus
•Slow channel changing
•Occasional restarts required
Key Features
System as tested:
•FX Edition Media Center ($5,499)
•Dual CableCARD tuner option ($450)
•Autonomic Mirage Media
•Controlsoftware ($199)
•Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66-GHz processor, 2-GB RAM, 1-terabyte storage
•Windows Vista Ultimate operating system
•NVidia GeForce 8500 graphics card optimized for high-definition playback, with scaling up to 2560 x 1600
•Combination HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc drive that also burns DVDs and CDs
•Stores music, videos, photos, and TV

But this is all new territory: Vista Media Centers, and especially Vista with CableCARD, are virtually untested in the marketplace. And with Vista getting some negative press these days as a still-buggy operating system, I was excited but wary as I pulled my FX from its box. Would it serve up good times? Or would Vista crash the party?

Setup
Let's start with the hardware. Appearances and heft can tell you a lot about an A/V component — and you'll know from the minute you set the FX Edition Media Center on its shelf that it's a serious bit of business. Its weight and build quality reminded me of a good multichannel amplifier, thanks to sturdy heat sinks that line the sides. These cool the hot-running silicon via passive heat pipes, thus avoiding the noisy fan that's a fixture in most PCs. The result is essentially silent operation: Short of putting your ear on the chassis, you can't hear any mechanical noise whatsoever.

The front panel is sleek, with only Power and disc Open/Close buttons and a two-line, scrolling display. The rear panel, meanwhile, has everything needed to connect to your home theater system. For video, you'll find HDMI and DVI-I, as well as a multipin connector with an included dongle for breaking out component- and S-video, plus a SCART plug for European TVs. Audio connections include four minijack outputs for 7.1-channel analog, as well as a TOSlink digital audio output. (My unit also had eight RCA analog audio jacks that are currently inactive but could be tapped later.) Additionally, there are six USB 2.0 connections, an IEEE-1394 (FireWire) connection, an eSATA connector for adding external eSATA storage, and a Gigabit Ethernet connection. Given that so many features of Windows Media Center involve Internet downloads, a broadband connection is a prerequisite.

The HDMI output is currently limited to video only, but S1Digital expects this to be resolved in an HDMI 1.3 upgrade next year. (Current owners can expect to pay about $250.) Even without 1.3, though, the FX will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks from the high-def disc formats onboard and output them via the 7.1-channel analog jacks. The TOSlink digital output carries all other audio signals.

As noted, one of the big advantages of Vista-based machines is their ability to integrate with CableCARDs for receiving and recording encrypted cable channels without a cable box. My system was outfitted with dual CableCARD slots as well as an ATSC off-air digital tuner, with each tuner requiring its own cable feed. (DirecTV is reported to be working on a Media Center CableCARD as well, which S1Digital says will be field-upgradable.) Of course, if you've ever done it, you know that installing a CableCARD is (insert sarcasm here) a treat in itself, and it typically requires a visit from your cable company. In my case, two visits and several phone calls were required before it was up and working.

Included with the FX is a Logitech wireless Bluetooth keyboard with a built-in fingerpad for mouse-pointing. But if you restrict the FX to functioning solely as an entertainment server — something that S1Digital recommends — you'll more likely find yourself using the included IR Media Center remote to operate it, or one of the third-party controller options. For instance, there are modules that support advanced control with Crestron, AMX, and HAI automation systems. My FX also came loaded with Autonomic Control's Mirage Media Control software, which delivered a touchpanel interface on Flash-enabled Web browsers. Also due soon are reasonably priced remotes that take advantage of Vista's SideShow capability, displaying metadata right on the remote to allow file selections without powering up your display.

Final installation includes some simple configuration — mainly, setting up the electronic program guide, selecting the TV aspect ratio and resolution, and establishing the media sharing among other computers on the network. Incidentally, these and all other installation tasks should be handled by the dealer; the FX is not available directly to consumers.

One of the coolest features of Windows Media Center is the ability to stream programming to extenders located in other parts of your home. Currently, up to five extenders can be supported, each streaming an independent program. Vista extenders are just now reaching the market — but I used an Xbox 360 as an extender, and it worked wonderfully. It delivered the same interface as the main zone and enabled remote viewing of live and recorded programs, including those in HD; it also let me browse my entire photo and music library.

Performance
Any review of a Windows Media Center PC is as much a review of the operating system as it is of the hardware (if not more). And whatever your feelings about Microsoft, you can't deny that its Media Center has a slick, simple-to-use interface. Activities are intelligently divided into TV + Movies, Sports, Online Media, Pictures + Videos, Music, and Tasks. The majority of system control is reduced to just Up, Down, Left, Right and Enter, making it easy enough for anyone to master. The display is also optimized for widescreen TVs, with media spreading the width of the screen and allowing the display of more information at once.

The FX includes DVR functionality in spades, and the 1-terabyte hard drive can store approximately 100 hours of high-def programming. For the most part, watching TV from a media server is no different from using any other tuner. However, the FX was slow to change channels, taking about 2 seconds between button presses — a potential bug for inveterate channel-surfers.

Where Windows Media Center really distinguishes itself, though, is in the programming guide. It loads 14 days worth of programming, with search options that my Scientific Atlanta cable box could only dream of. Being able to search for something by title, keyword, category, actor, or director is a phenomenally powerful tool for finding shows you know you want to see, as well as additional shows you might not even know about.

On the other hand, CableCARD, while a much-awaited boon to Media Centers, still has some real limitations in this and other applications. Because it's a one-way device, you don't have access to any of your cable company's on-demand or interactive services. But perhaps more critical is the fact that more and more cable systems are employing a relatively new broadcast technology called "switched digital video" that can further restrict your ability to play back certain channels via CableCARD. In order to let the cable operator deliver more channels with its available bandwidth, switched digital video only sends to the home those channels that have been specifically requested — which means it requires the two-way communication that only set-top boxes can currently provide. In my case, this meant that I didn't receive more than 20 channels that I normally get via set-top box, including several HD channels. Bummer! Furthermore, anything recorded on CableCARD is protected, so you can't archive recorded programming by burning it onto a DVD.

For watching movies, Windows Media Center provides some sweet browsing options. It starts by displaying the cover art of movies playing right now from your channel lineup. Selecting a cover then reveals the movie's plot and lets you see the director and cast, a full review, and a list of similar movies. Selecting a cast member pulls up a list of all other movies that can be found featuring that actor, while the "similar movies" list shows all movies considered similar, whether they're playing within the 14-day guide period or not. If a title you want is outside the guide period, you can log it to be recorded if and when it does come on. Nice!

Sports fans are going to flip for Media Center's sports options. Within the sports guide, you can jump to Fox News to browse top stories, photos, videos, and scores. With a few button presses, I pulled up a full preview of the big Steelers-Patriots game, including an incredible array of stats and even a list of injured players. If that isn't enough, Media Center can also keep tabs on your fantasy sports teams for NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB.

One of the things I was most excited about was having a single drive to handle all disc formats, and it turned out to be one of the FX's best features. For the most part, it played both Blu-ray and HD DVD titles with aplomb; the picture on both formats is so much better than standard DVD images that the FX should make a believer out of any holdouts. The disc player wasn't without its quirks: Like some standalone high-def players we've tested, it occasionally got hung up on specific titles. S1Digital says this is a function of the third-party high-def player software supplied in the FX, which, like all the unit's software, automatically upgrades via the Internet as new fixes are issued. Another oddity: Due to some vagaries in how it interacts with Vista, the player currently requires you to always press Stop first before hitting the Media Center button when watching either disc format, or else the system locks up. That may also get straightened out in software upgrades.

I also had some problems with standard DVDs. The FX occasionally couldn't recognize or detect those discs, requiring me to close and reopen Media Center or, sometimes, restart the whole system. Reinstalling Vista at S1Digital's direction greatly reduced these problems, though it didn't eliminate them.

Of course, any time you combine a DVD player and a hard drive, the question about ripping movies comes up. Out of the box, the FX will rip unprotected DVDs — in other words, practically nothing that you would actually want to rip. However, if you download some readily available third-party decrypting software, you can turn the FX into a powerful DVD server. Ripping a DVD takes about 15 minutes and produces an exact replica of the original disc. I imported several discs, and they looked and sounded perfect off the hard drive. While the interface is nowhere near as elegant as that of the Kaleidescape Movie & Music Server (see our October 2006 test report), the $15,000 you'll keep in your pocket ain't bad either.

Beyond traditional media, Windows Media Center offers a wealth of online entertainment choices. My wife and I watched concerts by Pink and Michael Bublé, found out about the snakehead fish epidemic, browsed upcoming movie trailers, and watched some viral videos. (I love you, "Ask a Ninja"!) We also caught missed episodes of 30 Rock and The Office at NBC.com and streamed "Watch Now" films from Netflix. Image quality varied, as it does with all Internet video, but watching on our 61-inch HDTV was far more engaging than using a 15-inch PC monitor.

S1Digital selected for the FX an NVidia graphics card optimized for HD DVD and Blu-ray playback, with dedicated H.264 bitstream processing. The card handles resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, and it will pass 1080p/24 to capable displays. Like most reviewers, I use Silicon Optix's fantastic HQV Benchmark DVDs to evaluate processor performance, and NVidia's published test results (scores of 111 out of 130 for the standard-def disc and 55 out of 100 for the HD version) mirrored my own findings.

Of course, tough going on torture tests doesn't always result in poor real-world performance, which was certainly the case here. I watched several movies and a ton of cable TV while the FX was in my possession, and the scaling was generally good, yielding detailed, "jaggy"-free images. The notable exceptions were with some DVDs that were shot on video rather than film. For instance, throughout both James Taylor's Live at the Beacon Theatre and an independent movie called Closing Escrow, the picture exhibited an interlacing artifact known as "combing," where the image would break into horizontal pixel lines that resembled the tines of a comb. The severity of this artifact was highly affected by the speed of the image's movement, and it could be quite distracting. In contrast, the Faroudja scaler in my TV handled the same signals far better.

Bottom Line
One of the intriguing things about a media server is that it could be the last component you ever need to buy. With the FX's architecture allowing for virtually unlimited hardware upgrades and online software and firmware updates, the system can be modified to handle new technologies as they become available.

Much has been said lately about Vista's instability, and I did have those infrequent lockups that required system restarts. To be fair, S1Digital says my experience wasn't common and may have been related to bugs introduced by S1's own preloading of the software (an unusual practice) or the intricacies of the still-new CableCARD interface. Still, it has to be mentioned.

The vast majority of the time, though, the FX Edition Media Center performed like a champ, opening up a new world of entertainment possibilities and media browsing — one that points the way to a very exciting future. And the FX's broad mix of features and superb build quality make a great impression. For those ready to experience convergence today, S1Digital is ready to serve.

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