Using a computer in your home theater in one way or another has been a hot topic on the show for a while now; we have looked at the Mac Mini, we're looking at Linux and MythTV, various Windows topics have come up, etc. Today we want discus another HTPC product, but this time it's an off-the-shelf Media Center running Microsoft Vista, the HP Pavilion Media Center m8000n.

 

Vista Media Center

Home Theater PC is a big topic around here lately. We had an overwhelmingly positive response to our Mac Mini Video Server Project. Our MythTV project is almost complete and that is receiving allot of feedback asking us to hurry up already. So today we want to sneak in a discussion of another HTPC product, this time it's an off-the-shelf Microsoft Vista Media Center. For this evaluation we used the HP Pavilion Media Center m8000n ($950 Buy Now). It comes with:

• 2.6 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5200+ 
• NVIDIA nForce 430 Chipset
• 2 GB RAM, 500 SATA HD
• DVD Burner
  
• NTSC & ATSC Tuner

This machine packs plenty of power and can handle any material you can throw at it.  It also has doors on the front of the enclosure  that open to reveal expansion bays for added storage. The computer can do so much more than we are going to talk about today. This is a discussion about the Media Center aspects of the m8000n. Please go to the HP site more more information about the PC.

Setting up the Media Center was quite easy and can be accomplished via the remote control. You can use the Keyboard but we wanted to see if we could run it without a typical computer interface. The answer is yes but some might find it a bit painful, and will opt to bring out the keyboard.  You answer the typical questions about your home theater system and input your zip code for your TV lineup. After you have connected your antenna to the digital tuner you scan for channels and one by one they start to be added to your lineup. The whole setup took about 15 minutes. You need to have an Internet connection for this to work properly.

After you have set it up you start scanning for media content. Here you can scan attached drives or shared drives on other computers. Not only did Vista pick up all of our windows shares, but the software just as simply scanned the SAMBA shared drives on Ara's Mac Mini and in short order was playing all the tracks on all of them through the Media Center. It will not play DRM protected tracks.  Videos were playable too.  You could not play "Backed Up" DVDs through the Media Center but you could through the stand alone Media Player.

The GUI took a few minutes to get used to. It seems a bit more complex than it needs to be, but it does have a ton of features, so the complexity is probably warranted.  The 'up and down' coupled with 'side to side' navigation style makes it easy to get to everything with a remote, but takes a little while to feel at home with.  You can browse your music. videos, watch TV, listen to Internet radio, and get your news all from the comfort of your couch.  To hone in on the exact content you're looking for, you do the typical sorting for titles based on Album, Artist, Genre, etc. The Media center supports HDTV and did a great job pulling in the OTA and unencrypted Cable signals and displaying them on the TV. The GUI can be optimized for 16:9 displays so watching on your TV is no problem.

The feature we really enjoyed with the Media Center is its ability to share its screen with extender devices, specifically in our case the Xbox 360. In a matter of minutes you type in a code and your Xbox 360 is displaying the same screen as the Media Center PC - in HD to boot! Anything you can do in front of the main PC you can do in front of your Xbox 360. You can change channels of even read news. You take control of the screen. Ara's kids kept getting annoyed at the screen changing all the time. This makes computers like the m8000n more valuable than just a regular PC. You can leave the computer in the office connected to the Internet and the home network by day. At night you can use the Media Center functionality through your Xbox 360. Its a great way to turn one machine into two.

Microsoft also provides links to news feeds that include video and text. You can get your news on demand. We did not see an option for podcasts (both audio and video). It would be nice if you could subscribe to shows within the interface and then allow for syncing to your PMP if you choose.

There are companies building Media Centers built around this technology. These boxes can accept a cable card and thus be used solely as a Media Center device. Niveus Media is one such company. They have boxes that start out at $3200 and go up from there. Makes us wish HP didn't get out of the DEC game.  The themes can be changed too if you don't like the look and feel.

Overall, we were pleased with the Media Center application on the new Vista operating system. There is nothing earth shattering here its just a bit more polished and has a little more eye candy and comes in a fully functional state out of the box.  There's no need to install a few more programs to tie everything together. It would be nice if there was a way to play backed up DVDs then you'd have something to talk about.  We've heard about some ways to do it, but due to DRM considerations they aren't supported by Microsoft, so we didn't test them out.  The HP m8000n performed wonderfully. It was quiet and didn't miss a beat. Thank you to HP for letting us use their computer to demo Microsoft Vista.