High-Quality Entertainment, Low Cost

Media Center PCs were made for the holidays. With a single remote control, you can orchestrate all the music for your parties, quickly create and play back slide shows, and program your PC to record your favorite TV show while you're out ringing in the new year. And, they're affordable.

We tested four systems, each with a discrete graphics card and TV tuner and costing around $2000 (including an LCD monitor and speakers): HP's $1700 Media Center m7260n Photosmart PC, Polywell's $1888 MiniBox 939NX-MCE, Shuttle's $2181 XPC G5 8300mc, and Sony's $1900 VAIO VGC-RC110G. After we hooked each of them up to a big-screen TV set in the PC World Test Center's "digital living room," we watched TV programs and DVD movies and listened to music on CD.

All four of the systems handled audio and video playback with little trouble; computing horsepower didn't seem to matter. The Polywell PC, with its dual-core Athlon 64 X2 CPU, was much faster than the other systems on WorldBench 5, but wasn't any better at Media Center tasks. What did differ significantly was the systems' features--and those are what matter most when you buy a Media Center PC.

Living-room looks: Media Center PCs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from sleek designs for the entertainment center to conventional PC cases. Which system is right for you may ultimately depend on where you plan to put it. The HP and Sony systems have ordinary-looking midsize-tower cases, while the Polywell and Shuttle PCs are stylish, toaster-size boxes that would look at home in an office or a living room (though the slick black-and-chrome case of the tiny Shuttle PC would be a better fit with living-room decor). But remember that small cases mean less space for expansion; the Shuttle has no room for more hardware and has only two open USB ports.

TV tuner and remote control: The Shuttle XPC G5 8300mc was pricier than the other PCs, which lowered its overall rating. One bright spot: Its dual TV tuners let you watch one program while recording another. If you're planning to record video using Windows XP Media Center Edition, a dual-TV-tuner system is worth the extra money up front. HP, for example, charges $70 to upgrade from a single TV tuner to a dual tuner on its configure-to-order machines.

All four of our test systems came with a remote control. Don't buy a Media Center PC without one: Remote control is the heart of Windows XP Media Center, even for systems that are lacking a TV tuner. Without a remote, the Media Center OS is just another software program for playing multimedia. Adding a remote costs about $20 to $30.

Ins and outs: All four PCs offered various analog and digital connectors. However, the HP lacked a DVI output for showing digital video on our large DLP TV. That limitation forced us to view TV programs and DVD movies over an S-Video analog connection, and the resulting picture was noticeably blurry. Be sure to use a digital video connection when you can, especially on large-screen digital TVs or displays. (If you have a TV set or display with only analog inputs, you should look for a system with the higher-quality component analog connector, which none of the four systems we tested had.) See our big-screen buying guide for an overview of video connections.

The audio connections on Media Center PCs also differ. All of our test systems except the Polywell had an S/PDIF digital audio port; the HP had only an RCA connector, although the Shuttle and Sony systems accepted the more common optical cable with a Toslink connector.

Storage: Music, photo, and video collections can take up a lot of space. All four review systems provided at least a 200GB hard drive. HP's Media Center m7260n offered a generous 300GB hard drive plus a bay for plugging in an HP Personal Media Drive, an external USB hard drive; the prices range from $150 for a 120GB model to $350 for a 400GB unit. Also impressive was the Polywell system, which, despite its small case, had two 250GB hard drives striped in a RAID 0 array for faster performance. All four of the systems provided a multiple-format media card reader, as well as a DVD±RW drive that can write up to 8.5GB per DVD disc.

A smooth start: Making sense of a Media Center PC's many audio and video connections requires good documentation, especially for the uninitiated. Here, the HP m7260n was far and away the top dog: Two startup manuals were packed with clear, useful diagrams, and all the ports on the back and front were clearly labeled and color-coded. By contrast, the Shuttle XPC G5 8300mc came with a very thin setup pamphlet whose diagrams and instructions confused as much as they helped.

Rattle and hum: In a silent living room, the constant hum of a PC can be like Chinese water torture. In an informal listening test in our "digital living room," all of the PCs produced a quiet buzz that was inaudible while a movie or music was playing, but loud enough to be annoying while a person was reading. The smaller Polywell and Shuttle mini-box systems sounded a bit louder than the midsize-tower systems.

What you see and hear: If you're planning to get a display and speakers with a Media Center PC instead of connecting it to a TV set and sound system, choose carefully. We liked watching TV on Sony's $600 17-inch wide-screen MFM-HT75W display, which produced crisp, clear images; the garden-variety 17- or 19-inch LCDs of the other systems produced acceptable but unexciting pictures. As for audio, the Logitech 5.1 speakers that came with the Polywell and Shuttle PCs sounded very good for a sub-$100 set, while the cheap pair of Sony speakers that accompanied the VAIO sounded terrible.

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