Shuttle and Sony Media Center PCs
July 2004
Media Mogul Match Up
By Grant Clauser
While DVRs, DVD recorders and media servers have wide appeal for media happy early adopters, it's on the PC side of things that this kind of convergence is really taking shape. Media Center PCs tie together your television and audio system and control everything through a simple interface that you can read across the room and access with a single remote. These multimedia managers catalog your music, play games, record TV shows, store digital pictures and make DVDs out of your home camcorder movies.
Last year when Media Center PCs broke onto the scene, a lot of people scoffed at the idea of bringing a computer into the living room. PCs don't look like consumer electronics components, won't fit nicely on an equipment shelf, make more noise than refrigerator and are cumbersome to use.
With Microsoft's recent revamp of the Media Center OS and manufacturer's overhauling their designs, the latest generation of Media Center PCs more appealing, both in usability and in aesthetics. They are no longer the ugly and complicated PC beasts they used to be.
The two Media Center PCs looked at here, the Sony Vaio PVC-RZ54G and the Shuttle G46100 XPC are designed to serve your computing needs as well as replace an entire rack of A/V equipment. They include DVD recorders, TV tuners, IR remotes, media card readers and large hard drives for storing all your stuff. They are also designed outside of the traditional PC look in order to encourage users to place them in a living room rather than the den.
When in standard Windows mode, you won't notice any difference using these computers compared to any Windows XP system. Everything is right where you expected. If you want to listen to music, watch DVDs or videos stored on the hard drive, view digital picture slide shows or listen to Internet radio, you do so through the media center interface. The only Media Center Menu options that take you out of that is the Create DVD option, which then launches the DVD burner program from within the standard Windows interface.
With the TV tuner or your cable/satellite box hooked up you can watch TV, scroll through a program guide and record TV programs (much like a Tivo or ReplayTV). If you want to play games, work on documents or do any other non-entertainment type application, then you return to the XP interface. Switching from the XP screen to the Media Center screen is easier and more intuitive than the other way around. I dontt understand why the remote couldntt include a button to take you back to the Windows XP desktop, since it includes one to take you to the Media Center one.
By Grant Clauser
While DVRs, DVD recorders and media servers have wide appeal for media happy early adopters, it's on the PC side of things that this kind of convergence is really taking shape. Media Center PCs tie together your television and audio system and control everything through a simple interface that you can read across the room and access with a single remote. These multimedia managers catalog your music, play games, record TV shows, store digital pictures and make DVDs out of your home camcorder movies.
Last year when Media Center PCs broke onto the scene, a lot of people scoffed at the idea of bringing a computer into the living room. PCs don't look like consumer electronics components, won't fit nicely on an equipment shelf, make more noise than refrigerator and are cumbersome to use.
With Microsoft's recent revamp of the Media Center OS and manufacturer's overhauling their designs, the latest generation of Media Center PCs more appealing, both in usability and in aesthetics. They are no longer the ugly and complicated PC beasts they used to be.
The two Media Center PCs looked at here, the Sony Vaio PVC-RZ54G and the Shuttle G46100 XPC are designed to serve your computing needs as well as replace an entire rack of A/V equipment. They include DVD recorders, TV tuners, IR remotes, media card readers and large hard drives for storing all your stuff. They are also designed outside of the traditional PC look in order to encourage users to place them in a living room rather than the den.
When in standard Windows mode, you won't notice any difference using these computers compared to any Windows XP system. Everything is right where you expected. If you want to listen to music, watch DVDs or videos stored on the hard drive, view digital picture slide shows or listen to Internet radio, you do so through the media center interface. The only Media Center Menu options that take you out of that is the Create DVD option, which then launches the DVD burner program from within the standard Windows interface.
With the TV tuner or your cable/satellite box hooked up you can watch TV, scroll through a program guide and record TV programs (much like a Tivo or ReplayTV). If you want to play games, work on documents or do any other non-entertainment type application, then you return to the XP interface. Switching from the XP screen to the Media Center screen is easier and more intuitive than the other way around. I dontt understand why the remote couldntt include a button to take you back to the Windows XP desktop, since it includes one to take you to the Media Center one.
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