Shuttle XPC M1000 home theater PC reviewed
posted Oct 19th 2005 6:25PM
While most gadgetheads are only satisfied by building their own tricked-out Media Center PCs, the average soccer mom and dad could certainly derive some benefit by routing all their A/V-gear through a Windows Media Center Edition-equipped PC. Unfotunately, most dedicated home theater PCs are either super-expensive, super-large, or super-confusing (and most times a combination of the three), which has limited their appeal to a niche market so far. Well Shuttle is trying change this perception, and AnandTech believes they have a good shot at reaching a larger audience with their XPC M1000, although some notable exceptions apply. This media-centric PC is designed to blend in with other components, and as such it sports a glossy low-profile cabinet, and a Pentium M 1.73 GHz processor meant for low heat dispersion. The M1000 has got all of your multimedia needs covered, with component video, DVI, S-video, composite, optical and coax out, optical in, 7.1 RCA connectors, FireWire, USB 2.0, 8-in-1 card reader, 802.11b/g, IR out, DVD-burner, wireless keyboard and remote, 250GB hard drive, and front expansion bay for an extra drive. The downsides here are a paltry 512MB of RAM and poor handling of HD content, due to the inability to capture cable and satellite streams, but Anandtech places most of the blame for the latter on the entertainment industry (which is kind of a Catch-22, seeing as that without Hollywood, we'd have none of the content to create a demand for these products in the first place).
1.73Mhz is not enough power for wmv HD playback, or HD mpeg2 software playback. For wmv HD, it seems like you need 3ghz at least. A processor as slow as M1000's would seem to be a non-starter for today's home theater environment (where HD is now common).
I could see "less of the content that would drive the demand..." but "none of the content"? If it weren't Hollywood it'd be coming from somewhere else. Creative people can't help but create.
I've played around with it a bit and it seems very nice, but since it can't capture HDCP, oh well it's back to the drawing boards.
Why not Fusion QAM tuner? That would upgrade it a lot re HDTV.... IMHO.
The review covers most of the same gripes that have plagued MCE-type PCs since they came out. Piss poor HDTV support and real-time show scheduling. Basically, until holly quits dragging ass on wanting to DRM everything they create and broadcast; we'll never get to see and play with the full potential of all these wonderful toys.
TIVO has the same problem with show schedules; where a game runs too late, or The Simspons is suddenly on at a different time - it misses it.
As for the hardware, for your average home entertainment users who want to get their feet wet; this fits the bill.
"FusionHDTV QAM decoding is limited to only the non-encrypted channels available (generally the OTA local stations)."
As long as there is no DVB-S Supported by MCE, there is not going to be happening much...
bcc, a Pentium M does not scale the same as a Pentium 4. This machine is based on a mobile processor and that 1.73 is a potent CPU. The problem I see is that they are using old PCI slots for decoder cards when they should have used PCI express slots with dedicated bandwidth and allow you to add more cards. The Pentium M's drawbacks is that it is a very single threaded CPU and I'm not too sure on how it would work recording and playing (not decoding, that's for the cards) multiple channels of information.
Yep, Ken is right. The M cpu has enough to run the rig, for single-threaded applications.
Lacking full HD support just cripples this kind of piece. It really sucks.
I'm kind of stumped as to why they came out with this computer when the hp z555 can do all this and more and looks just like it. It has a p4, 512 ram, three tuners (two standard one high def), 7.1, component, composite, etc. And they are coming out with the z556 with pentium d by the holidays. It just doesn't make sense to get one of those shuttles.