Shuttle XPC M1000 home theater PC reviewed

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).