The Short Form

$7,697 (as tested) / NIVEUSMEDIA.COM / 866-258-2929

Snapshot

The Rainier PC and the Edge extender successfully elevate the Media Center experience to the high-end A/V realm

Plus

• Bulletproof build quality and standard A/V form factor • Mostly glitch-free performance • No fan noise from PC or extender • Niveus installer network helps guarantee successful CableCARD installation

Minus

• Noisy hard drive in review unit • Current HDMI drivers not compatible with all preamp/processors • Just-average video-processor performance

Key Features

• HDMI, DVI, optical digital, and 7.1-channel analog-audio outputs • 1080p video output • Plays Blu-ray Discs, DVDs, CDs, and AVCHD discs • 500-GB hard drive • Dual CableCARD slots (digital cable receiver) • Wireless RF keyboard • RS-232 serial port • Rainier ($4,699): 19 1/4 x 6 x 15 1/4 in; 27 lb • Edge extender ($1,499): 17 1/4 x 4 3/4 x 15 in; 30 lb • Digital cable receiver ($1,499): 17 x 2 3/4 x 15 in; 10 lb

The whole Windows Media Center PC concept is something I've been curious about for a long time. But as a traditional A/V guy (and Mac user) who's comfortable with his stacks of components and web of cables, I've been hesitant to take the plunge. It was only after stumbling across one of these PCs at a trade show — a model from Niveus Media, running Vista and tuning premium high-def cable channels via CableCARD — that I even started to entertain the notion of chucking separate components for a single box that does, well, everything. A PC in the living room? Bring it on!

Not surprisingly, the first thing that grabbed me about Niveus's Rainier Edition (which can be configured with a hard-drive capacity up to 750 GB), was its resemblance to a typical high-end audio component. With its black, brushed-aluminum faceplate and flared, side-mounted heat sinks, the look is more Krell than Dell. But for Niveus, packing a PC into a formidable case is more than a matter of style. The Rainier's passive cooling system employs heat-pipe technology — an industrial technique that uses liquid-filled tubes to transfer excess warmth from the processor and video card to the external heat sinks. This allows Niveus to use only a single, near-silent fan inside the Rainier, resulting in quieter overall operation.

The model I tested, the Rainier Edition 500HD, is fairly maxed-out hardware-wise, packing a 500-GB hard drive, a 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and an NVIDIA 8500GT card that scales video up to 1080p resolution. Its versatile disc drive uses ArcSoft's Total Media Theater software to play not just DVDs and CDs but Blu-ray Discs, too; I could also use the drive to view discs holding high-def video shot with a Sony AVCHD camcorder. ArcSoft TMT supports Dolby TrueHD, uncompressed 5.1-channel PCM, and Dolby Digital Plus soundtracks on Blu-ray, although its handling of DTS-HD Master Audio is limited to decoding the lossy "core" version. The recordable drive can also burn music playlists to CD, but DVD copies of CableCARD-tuned programs (even lame-ass infomercials!) are off-limits because of content-protection restrictions.

As impressive as the Rainier Edition 500HD's front panel might be to an A/V gearhead, the drool really starts flowing when you peek around the back. Along with HDMI and DVI, there's a trio of BNC connectors for component-video connections, as well as eight gold-plated RCA jacks for making a 7.1-channel analog-audio hookup to an outboard processor, amplifier, or receiver. In a world where most Media Center PCs use cheesy mini-jack connectors for handling analog audio and video, Niveus's attention to quality here really sets it apart. You also get an Ethernet jack, multiple USB and FireWire ports, and an RS-232 port for an advanced control system.

Instead of trying to make room in the Rainier's well-stuffed chassis for CableCARD, Niveus offers an external solution with its digital cable receiver, which has the same style and form factor as the company's other components. It connects to the PC via USB 2.0, an interface with sufficient bandwidth to pass the two high-def video streams coming from the receiver's twin CableCARD tuners.

One thing that Niveus didn't bother to put its design stamp on is the system's remote: It's the same Microsoft-issued one you get with any Media Center PC. While the controls are sufficient for most tasks — browsing TV-channel grids, music libraries, or photo collections — I found the remote to be somewhat limited when I was watching Blu-ray Discs. (Some playback functions could only be controlled via the software player's onscreen menu bars.) But I did like the wireless keyboard that came with the system. Along with providing RF control over the Rainier, the keyboard has a built-in trackball mouse that makes it a breeze to operate.

SETUP

Unlike most other Media Center PC makers, Niveus only sells products through its network of custom installation pros. There are many advantages to this, the first being that your system gets set up and configured by people who know the product inside and out. Also, the Niveus dealer network has extensive field experience with CableCARD installation. (The company has even produced a Webinar on the topic — now that's serious!) The benefit here is that when your cable guy shows up with the CableCARDs (the same ones that the cable company's service rep, reading from a script, tried to talk you out of ordering), a Niveus-trained tech will be on hand to supervise the installation. And not only will the Niveus guy ask the right questions, he's trained in the art of the Vulcan nerve pinch (just in case the cable guy tries to leave without completing the job properly.)

My own install didn't go down as smoothly as most apparently do, thanks to the Time Warner Cable techs showing up with a bunch of nonfunctioning CableCARDs. But once they left, Scott Varner, Niveus's manager of sales and training, connected the Rainier to my HDTV via DVI and strung a set of six audio cables from its rear panel to my Anthem AVM50 preamp/processor's 5.1-channel analog-audio input. For some reason, an HDMI connection to the Anthem didn't work, although this problem is supposed to be addressed in a Niveus driver update.

The setup options in the Media Center's Task menu let us configure the Rainier's video output for 1080p/60 display. (A trip to the NVIDIA control panel also gives you a 1080p/24 output option for viewing Blu-ray Discs on a compatible video display — but you'll need to switch back to 1080p/60 for watching TV.) The Intel Audio Setup screen also let us configure all six speakers as Large on the Rainier's multichannel analog output — a setting that allowed the Anthem to perform the bass-management duties.

Thinking on his feet, the very capable Scott also MacGyver'd my primitive home network to connect the Rainier to both a cable modem on another floor and Niveus's Edge Media Center extender — a task that involved a run to Best Buy to get a powerline network adapter. The Rainier sports a built-in Wi-Fi receiver, but the company strongly recommends plugging its components into a wired network. As any custom installer will tell you, a wired setup tends to be more reliable — especially when shuttling high-def video around the house.

And just what exactly is an Edge Media Center extender? It belongs to a new category of products, just now hitting the market, that do exactly what their name suggests: you hook them up to your network so you can extend the Windows Media Center experience by streaming content from your Media Center PC to additional A/V systems. (HDMI, component-video, optical digital, and stereo jacks are all onboard for making the connection.) I'll have more to say about this below, but first: How well does the Rainier itself work?

PERFORMANCE

The wonders of Windows Vista Media Center have been covered previously in these pages — most recently in John Sciacca's review of S1Digital's FX Edition — so I won't go into detail here. In short, it provides a dynamic widescreen interface for browsing various media, including recorded and live digital-cable channels, music ripped from your CD library, subscription-based music services, Internet radio and video channels, and digital photos.

Niveus adds custom tabs within the Media Center interface so you can buy and download high-rez music from the impressively deep MusicGiants library as well as check your local weather forecast. And plenty of additional plug-ins are floating around the Web, like vmcNetflix, which lets Netflix subscribers use the Media Center to stream on-demand movies from that service. The Niveus mothership discourages the use of third-party plug-ins, but a dealer can test out and qualify them for you before the system gets installed.

As I browsed the sizable video and music resources suddenly at my disposal, the Rainier's performance proved speedy and responsive. The experience was light-years ahead of that provided by my cable-company-leased DVR. And unlike the results of our last test of a Media Center PC with CableCARD, all standard- and high-def channels could be accessed when I attempted to tune into them from the channel grid.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to check out the Rainier Edition 500HD was to see how it fared as a Blu-ray Disc player. For the most part, it worked extremely well: 1080p images were crisp, showed strong contrast, and were free of any stuttering motion. The ArcSoft player's audio decoding also proved glitch-free — although the software's buggy information screen, which displayed data rate for the last-played (instead of the current) soundtrack format, made it hard to verify any audio tech specs. Another gripe about playback: there's no remote-control button or software command for ejecting Blu-ray Discs. I had to get up and paw at the minuscule, recessed eject button on the Rainier's front panel — a user-unfriendly touch in an otherwise bulletproof design.

The Rainier's video processing with 1080i (interlaced) programs and standard-definition movies and TV shows was passably good but not stellar. It failed the full suite of tests on the Silicon Optix HQV Benchmark Blu-ray test disc, and some tests on the DVD version of the same — surprising for an ISF-certified piece of gear. Any shortcomings here won't be an issue for Blu-ray movie playback, since those discs are encoded at 1080p resolution. But it does mean that jaggies (stairstep artifacts) might appear on both 1080i high- and standard-def programs originating on video, particularly in shots with camera motion. (Sure enough, when I went looking for artifacts, I spotted some.)

The Rainier unit that I tested had a fairly noisy hard drive that emitted a steady grinding sound as it kept pace to process the vast amounts of accumulated data. Unfortunately, this effectively canceled out the contributions of Niveus's passive-cooling design toward making the Rainier noise-free. When I ran this problem by the company, I was told that my review sample contained an older type of hard drive, and that a new, quieter model designed specifically for A/V applications is currently being installed in all of the company's Media Center PCs.

Now let's consider the Edge Media Center extender. It differs from extenders by companies like Linksys and D-Link in that it's exclusively designed to be connected via Ethernet to a wired home network. And whereas those other units have the cheap look of Internet appliances, the Edge is a dead-ringer for the Rainier, right down to its 17-inch-wide heavy-duty aluminum chassis.

Another thing that differentiates the Edge extender is that it's essentially an Xbox 360 game console in a far prettier package. "Hmmm," you might be thinking, "why not just buy an Xbox to use as an extender and save myself some cake?" The answer is that the Xbox is notorious for its excessive fan noise — something that's not an issue when you're playing first-person shooters but that does factor in when you're listening to music or trying to hear dialogue in movies starring someone other than The Rock or Jason Statham (the thinking man's Rock).

With the Edge, Niveus basically neutered the Xbox 360 of its game-playing capability and then used the company's own industrial cooling know-how to make the extender dead quiet. What you're left with is the Xbox's powerful graphics-rendering engine and rock-solid A/V playback. The Edge's onscreen graphics display appeared to be just as fast, fluid, and crisp as the Rainier's. By comparison, the Linksys extender suffered from stuttering graphics and was notably slower in refreshing CD art on the Music Library screen.

BOTTOM LINE

As someone who has previously gone on record dissing the idea of PCs in the home theater, I'm ready to do an about-face. My time spent with Niveus Media's Rainier 500HD (and Edge extender and digital cable receiver) sold me on the concept. It will be painful to reconnect my cable DVR when I have to send the Rainier back — and I was already fed up with the glitchy performance of standalone Blu-ray players. Was my experience with the Rainier bug-free? Not exactly. But having used it as my main TV and movie-disc viewing source for the past few months, I'm amazed at how few glitches I've actually encountered. A single box to handle all of your media? At this point, you'd be crazy not to consider it.