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New Alienware Media Center
Cyno01 writes "Alienware recently introduced a new product that seems to fill the gap between PVRs and PCs. The Navigator Media Center. It runs a new version of XP (Media Center Edition) and displays pictures, movies and plays DVDs. If I had the cash for it i would definitly ditch my 160Gb HD and Radeon AIW card."
I believe it is something only available on pre-made computers, although that may be changed in the future.
It is a tweaked version of XP, mostly.
But surely it will be released at some point.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
The key with a media PC is that it needs to be wireless and it also needs to be silent, the living room just isn't any place for a whirring, hissing PC.
The Problem is you can't get XP Media Center(legally) without buying a new computer right now. I haven't seen XP MC in action, but I for one have been waiting for this convergence for quite a while.
I've got an ATI AIW. It's cool and a really great use for an old PC and extra monitor, but the tools are just 'ok'.
There are a couple of Linux programs out there, but last time I checked they were still in their infancy or had a more narrow focus.
and it doesn't run that crappy XP.
Ok, I don't have the nifty remote, but I'm sure you can get one after market. Or get the All In Wonder 7500, like Tom did, and get a remote.
There are instructions for this @ Toms Hardware.
More flexibility on the configuration, etc, and you don't have to support any vendor (like Microsoft or Intel) that you don't want to.
Wow.....i'm really shocked at the prices on these things. "PRO" is 3--$ more for a .13 ghz increase...i mean REALLY here.....*sigh*
The PRO version also comes with a Western Digital Special Edition 120GB Hard Drive and a Pioneer DVD-RW Drive. So, the $300 upgrade may be well worth it.
So far, the Media Edition version of the OS is OEM only and it will stay like that for the foreseeable future. Having used it, I can say it is extremely functional and does what it says.
So, no, you could not really build one like the Alienware PC that easily, and you most likely think you have a "media" pc. Microsoft bashing aside, if this is their v1 effort, I cannot wait to see what they will make of it in a couple of years.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
AFAIK it's only available pre-installed on the special "Media Center PCs" at least that's what M$'s blurb says. There's more info on this OS (and some of the HP machines it was first announced to be used on) here [that's news.com.com ;)]. To be honest I can't see how anyone would really want to splash out on one of these considering the high cost and restrictions placed upon it's use (can you say DRM). I'd rather use some of the Multimedia-centric Linux distribs out there. Then again, I've seen stranger things happen... especially in the mass consumer market.
I want to not only be able to freely shift in time, but also be able to shift content in space between machines on my LAN. One has to wonder if this Windows XP box puts restrictions on moving content off the machine to other networked computers. TiVo certainly does, and because of the draconian lockdown these folks implemented in their series 2 version of this product (with all that cryptographic signing of the kernel nonsense, checksums for the filesystem and propietary boot firmware) I decided to return my Tivo (within the first 30 days) and brave the wild world of open source PVR products.
...
Short story is that a few weeks later I successfully managed to get MythTV working (tonight in fact). Sure, it took me a while longer, but I learned a heck of a lot in the process, and it didn't cost me much more at all.
Series 2 + lifetime subscription to programming guide:
$550
The non-refundable cost of shipping/return shipping:
$30
My new Pentium IV with Asus P4PE motheroboard (supports hyperthreading CPU, with onboard firewire, usb 2.0, serial ata, RAID, Gigabit LAN and intel8x0 5.1 surround sound -- all linux compatible) and ATI TV-Wonder (stereo version, not VE mono) for video-in and NVidia Ti4200 LeadTek for video-out (which sports Conexant Tv-out chip that is HDTV compatible unlike Philips Tv-out chip and also produces better picture quality with richer feature set)
$700
The satisfaction of doing it yourself
Priceless
So for all others out there like myself, remember there's www.mythtv.org
ZDNet realeased an article titled Windows XP Media Center: Who needs it? Not me back when the first of the XP Media Center devices/PCs turned up: the HP Media Center PC.
The title of the article sums it all up nicely in my book.
Russ
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
From my experience Alienware makes some real lemons. Their tech support is also incompetent. I would hate to buy an appliance that had the unreliability of a PC
http://freevo.sourceforge.net/
Current Features
* Watching TV, with TV Guide (using XMLTV).
* Playing Movies (AVI, MPEG, etc) and DVDs.
* Playing Music (MP3, Ogg).
* Viewing Pictures.
* Skins are configurable using XML files.
* Movie and Music file info using XML files.
* Preliminary Mame support.
Price == the cost of hardware.
Why exactly would I pay through the nose, ass and other body cavities for the alienware box?
Wow, it's a...brick...cinderblock maybe?
Oh, it has the Alienware name on it? We should pay more for that, right?
You know, I owned a overpriced cube-like computer that played DVDs too, the PowerMac Cube...it looked better and didn't have that $hitty XP on it either.
This is not a new concept people, MicroATX faactor motherboards are fairly common, and frankly, I could build the same machine for about half the price...Damn, for the extra 500 bucks it costs for them to market their name, I'll DRAW an alien head on the front of your's for you.
This Shuttle case is very noisy. The "liquid cooling" -- as Alienware calls it -- is in reality a heatpipe based CPU heatsink offloading to the 80mm fan at the back. And, unfortunately, the fan is very noisy. Also, the case doesn't suppress hard drive noise at all. (Saw this in a magazine reviewing the same Shuttle hardware a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure Google comes up with reviews on web rags.)
Unless Alienware managed to get a quiet(er) fan in there -- which I doubt because of the system specs, all hot stuff -- this is not a system for the living room.
This device would serve one purpose and one only: PVR. No one willing to shell out 1700 bucks for a media computer is going to settle for non-progressive scan DVD, for the first thing.
Secondly, mp3, photos, etc., are what my computer is for. I already have that capability.
Games? If you have a big screen TV, I guess. I also second the post about the shape and size of this thing; why make it so radically different than every other AV component I have? The old desktop shape is more the proper shape than a cube.
I still don't understand why I can't just shell out $350 for a device that does nothing but record TV. I want a digital VCR, that's all.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
I have no idea why the poster would want to 'return my Radeon AIW card'. What the linked page doesn't mention, and what people need to consider, is the capacity for ANY PVR/PC card to have hardware mpeg decoding and encoding. I believe the ATI All in Wonder 9700 Pro has SOME hardware support, accounting for 10-20% performance "boost" (i.e. less resources used), but I don't believe there are any other cards on the market with this feature. Hauupauge is scheduled to roll one out in the future (the PVR-350 I think?). Also, another feature that the ATI card has that this doesn't is support for a second tuner, letting you watch one show while recording another, or pic-in-pic. And all the great software bundled with their AIW. So why exactly is the Media Center betteR?
That was my plan too.
Using this component to feed a widescreen TV.
Yes, I tried all the drivers and went around and around with their tech support. They even had me try drivers for the 9500.
Anyways long story short. I could find no one anywhere that was able to over come the overscan issues which renders the output almost useless. Try using Windows missing at least 5% around the perimeter. It's a real adventure
While the output was decent enough to be legible for email etc. it was unusable due to the overscan.
ATI has left us hanging simply saying to keep checking back for updated drivers.
Definetely a product released that shoulldn't have been and my last ATI purchase (of course, I had said that 5 years ago because of their lousy drivers and support).
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