Gateway 500 Media Center PC

Gateway Media Center PC 500 Series Review

by Mick Lockey

- WHAT'S HOT: On the outside, Gateway's entertainment PC looks identical to the company's other black and silver boxes. Inside, the Media Center PC 500 is a multimedia tour de force. It starts with a specialized version of Windows XP, the Media Center Edition, that adds an intuitive menu of multimedia tasks: watching or recording TV; creating or playing video DVDs or music CDs; or running an on-screen slide show of your digital photos. A PCI adapter in the Gateway has an S-Video port for hooking up your TV to the PC, and a co-axial connector for cable and satellite. The system also comes with a remote control so you can do all of those important tasks from your easy chair. Gateway included one optical drive with this system--a DVD-RW/-R/+RW/+R drive that also records CDs, giving you the flexibility to record full-length videos and music or to back up your data on the system's massive 120GB hard drive. Gateway bundled a wealth of blank media for these tasks, including six DVD-R and one DVD-RAM disc, as well as three CD-RW and five CD-R discs.