Media Center PCs are designed to replace a stack of A/V components, letting you watch live or recorded TV shows, play or burn DVDs, download movies and music, and play home videos and photo slideshows. Available in various hardware configurations from several computer manufacturers, these remote-controllable systems share the Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 operating system. In the February/March issue we reviewed Dell's Dimension 4600C, and in June the Gateway FMC-901X and 610XL models.
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So what makes HP's m1000 series Media Center PCs different? We looked at the m1050y. Besides an internal 250-gigabyte (GB) hard-disk drive, it contains a removable Personal Media Drive (PMD) with a capacity of 160 GB. Once removed from the computer, the PMD is powered by its own AC adapter. You can use its USB 2.0 port to transfer any of your stored TV programs or other content to a computer in another room — or another state. I've spent far too much money on blank DVDs — and far too much time burning them — in order to liberate TV shows from the fixed drive in a Media Center PC so that I could enjoy them elsewhere. The idea of recording shows directly to a massive removable storage device I could toss in my shoulder bag was very seductive.
SETUP Setting up the Media Center PC was straightforward. The 3-pound Personal Media Drive is about the size of a VHS cassette and docks sideways in the PC's front bay. I attached wireless receivers to two of the computer's USB ports: a radio-frequency (RF) receiver for the keyboard and mouse and an infrared (IR) sensor for the handheld remote control. The remote's sensor includes a sticky wired emitter I affixed to the front of my cable TV box for changing channels. I connected my cable box's RF coaxial output to the TV/RF input on the computer and attached the supplied antenna to the PC's FM input. Then I connected HP's optional 23-inch f2304 high-definition LCD monitor to the PC's DVI (Digital Visual Interface) output. The widescreen monitor has built-in stereo speakers, so I used a miniplug-to-miniplug cable to connect it to the computer's analog stereo audio output.
When I first powered up, I set up TV reception, the remote control, and the Internet-based electronic program guide. Using the guide, I set the PC to record the movie This Is Spinal Tap from Bravo and a bunch of shows from other networks. The PC defaults to its internal hard drive (C), so I changed the recording destination to K, the Personal Media Drive . (A DVD/CD writer, DVD-ROM drive, and flash-memory slots eat up the alphabet from D to J.) Unfortunately, there's no way to direct recordings to one drive or the other — the setting ap plies to all recordings from that point on un less you change it. And you can't record programs directly to a blank DVD+R or +RW, the formats used by the DVD burner.
HOW IT WORKED When I returned to the HP Media Center PC after a weekend away, all the shows I'd selected to record were waiting for me on the Personal Media Drive . Two blue LEDs on its front indicate the state of the drive. A steady blue light means the drive is “warm-swappable,” meaning it's safe to remove it. If the second LED is pulsating, the drive shouldn't be removed.
I pulled out the PMD, attached its USB cable and AC adapter (a small “brick” and power cord that weigh another 1 1/2 pounds), and hooked it up to a Dell Media Center PC. Sure enough, the Dell recognized the drive, and I was given the option of playing shows from Windows Media Player or Media Center . An episode of Andromeda played fine.
I took the drive down the hall at Sound & Vision , and another editor plugged it into his Windows XP PC (also from HP but not a Media Center model). He played an episode of South Park using Windows Media Player and was able to copy a show to his computer's drive and watch it with the portable drive detached. I took the PMD home, where I plugged it into an older PC with USB 1.1 ports. It warned: “A hi-speed USB device is plugged into a non-hi-speed USB hub. Will function at reduced speeds.”
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My home computer recognized the contents of the drive, but until I downloaded and installed a DVR-MS plug-in from Microsoft as well as the Update for Windows XP Service Pack 1, which took more than an hour, I was unable to play any of the TV shows. (DVR-MS is Microsoft's file format for recording TV shows.) When Windows Media Player finally was able to play them, there were no performance glitches even with that USB 1.1 input.
It's too bad that the Personal Media Drive doesn't have a set of A/V outputs, which would let you connect it directly to a TV. I also wish the drive was smaller. Compared with the iPod, which holds up to 40 GB and slips easily into a shirt pocket, the PMD is gargantuan.
Besides watching or recording TV, the Media Center lets you listen to FM radio. The PC's internal drive buffers a program for up to an hour (assuming you don't change stations), so you can listen to a tune again or use the Skip button to leapfrog commercials. You can preset nine stations. Unfortunately, you can't save a radio program, and the radio function can't be used at all while a TV show is being recorded. You'd think a Media Center would be able to handle multimedia, right?
Another thing I'd have liked the Media Center to do was download rented movies from Movielink and CinemaNow directly to the Personal Media Drive . That would let me use the broadband connection I have in the city for a faster download but watch the movie on a notebook PC in my country house. This wouldn't violate digital rights management since I wouldn't be copying anything. Alas, there's no way to change the movie services' download default settings from the computer's internal drive, and once it's there, the flick can't be copied to the removable drive.
TV/MOVIE PERFORMANCE HP's slick f2304 monitor may not be a great match for conventional TV — nearly two inches of blackened screen curtain each side of a 4:3 program unless you opt to stretch images — but for widescreen shows like Stargate Atlantis , which I recorded from the SciFi Channel, the monitor and Media Center PC were meant for each other. A button on the remote let me zoom the program to one of three picture heights, and one was a nearly perfect screen fit.
The f2304 is also an HDTV monitor, with a 1,920 x 1,200-pixel native resolution, but except for a handful of Windows Media 9 high-def DVDs, you can't watch any high-def video through a Media Center PC. With an outboard HDTV tuner connected directly to the monitor, the picture was gorgeous, though like all LCD screens the f2304 can't produce true black and has a narrower viewing angle than a plasma or tube TV. Besides DVI, it includes VGA and component/S-video inputs. There's a headphone jack, volume controls, and a pic ture-in-picture function. The monitor with built-in stand weighs only 21 pounds.
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BOTTOM LINE At $2,400 for the PC as configured (after a $50 rebate) and $2,199 for the monitor (after a $100 rebate), or $4,500 together, the m1050y is not inexpensive in this age of commodity computing. But then again, you won't need much else for a small-room entertainment center. Sure, there are cheaper computers and separate A/V components, but few are as well integrated as this one-stop system from HP. And that pop- out Personal Media Drive can always stay with you.