The Entertainers

A PC in Every Living Room?

Microsoft created Media Center PCs for college students and urbanites who live in cramped quarters that don't have room for a computer, a television, and a home theater system. PC vendors have a different vision, however. In fact, every vendor participating in our review said its system was designed for the living room.

For this review, we tested six home theater PCs. Four of the systems ran Windows XP Media Center Edition: ABS's $1799 Media Center PC 8500, Alienware's $2900 Navigator Extreme, Cyberpower's $1753 Media Center PC, and Gateway's $2114 Media Center PC (which cannot be purchased without a display). Except in the case of the Gateway, we priced each system without a monitor, because vendors said their systems were designed to work with a television.

Other systems offer functionality similar to that of Media Center systems but use custom packages. We looked at the $2999 SleekLine 2800AV from PC Power & Cooling and the $2300 VAIO PCV-RZ26G from Sony. The VAIO uses Giga Pocket software for TV viewing, and a VAIO Media Player for music, digital video, and photos. The SleekLine 2800AV uses an ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder Pro graphics card and ATI's Multimedia Center software for TV viewing and recording, CyberLink's PowerDVD for playing movies, and Windows Media Player for music.

To help the computers fit more comfortably in the living room, ABS, Cyberpower, and PC Power & Cooling wrapped their models in stereo component-like cases. Whereas the SleekLine 2800AV is slim--only 2.25 inches high--the ABS and Cyberpower PCs are a bit bulkier than your average stereo receiver, though they'll fit into a living-room entertainment cabinet better than a typical tower would. Alienware's Navigator Extreme is small, boxy, and cubic, which may make it difficult to integrate with stereo components. Gateway and Sony opted for traditional tower cases, which would look out-of-place in most living rooms but would probably work fine if you're using them in a small apartment or dorm room.

If you're looking to inject some computer power into your home theater, ABS's Media Center PC 8500 performed the best in our tests and earns a Best Buy, although the model we tested had no rewritable DVD drive. PC Power & Cooling's SleekLine 2800AV offers high-end hardware, but its speakers were far too difficult for us to configure. Sony's VAIO has the necessary processing power and applications to work well as a digital video editing and photo viewing machine, but its hard-to-use software, lackluster sound, and lack of a channel guide mean it can't compete as a home theater PC.