Envive E-Center Pro intimidates with its 4.5TB, 8 TV tuners

These days, a lot of folks lust after a media server in their home to store astonishing amounts of flicks and pics. Not surprisingly, many companies want to build one too. The latest to get its hands dirty in this market is Envive, which announced its new gargantuan new E-Center Pro. This media PC maxes out at 8GB of RAM, 4.5TB of drive space (yes, you read right), no less than a whopping eight tuners (four each on NTSC and ATSC), gigabit Ethernet, DVI / HDMI out with optional HDCP support, optional Blu-ray, and the company says that an HD DVD drive will be available by the end of the year. We should point out that while the E-Center Pro comes with Windows Media Center 2005, it requires the custom-built EnviveOS to utilize all eight TV tuners. The press release tells us that this dense black box will start at $2500 and will begin shipping next month -- but there's no way to answer our most burning question, which is what it will actually cost with all the options tricked out? Yes, we asked, which means we can't afford it.

[steve @ Sep 16th 2006 3:11AM]

wow, 4.5 TB, I want it. :). If only the price is $300, I will buy it right away.


Any one know what is the rpm?
5400rpm ? 7200rpm?

[max @ Sep 16th 2006 3:15AM]

id assume 7200, after all they took the trouble to add EIGHT tuners

[Leyton Miller @ Sep 16th 2006 3:17AM]

If MCE is like XP SP2 it can't use anything past 3GBs of ram anyway. Probably a good vista-ready PC but paying for 5gbs of RAM you can't use seems stupid.

[Dave @ Sep 16th 2006 4:21AM]

8GB ram? For what? More that 4GB is waste of money!

Only glad there will be Blu-Ray player but this is the only nice thing about this...

[john @ Sep 16th 2006 6:37AM]

Envive E-Center Pro this media PC maxes out at 8GB of RAM thats great the pc will be so fast. Its good, but the price is very high $2500.

[GhostDoggy @ Sep 16th 2006 6:42AM]

How many people are currently laboring into recording NTSC analog off the air on their personal computers? While I know quite a few people into PC-based OTA recording, its pretty much restricted-effort for ATSC digital television (a la HDTV). Sounds like product fluff reporting to me.

Also, considering that broadcast HDTV at 1080i is topped out at 19.2 Mbps (2.4 MBps), I would think any reasonable software, operating system, and 1GB of RAM or less could handle four streams at once in recording. I mean, isn't basic IDE throughput on the order of 33MBps?

[disciple83 @ Sep 16th 2006 12:04PM]

buying a machine like this is like buying a Mach5 from Falcon NOrthwest or Voodoo. Is it necessary? Hells no, especially when you can build one yourself these days for thousands less, seriously. This machine is for the Paris Hilton type

[dmccunney @ Sep 16th 2006 2:26PM]

Er, where can I buy the extra eyes to *view* all that potential content, and the extra hours in the day to have the time to actually *watch* it?

As for RAM, note that you must use the custome EnviveOS to use all 8 tuners. Presumably, it supports using 8GB of RAM.

[Kojak71 @ Sep 16th 2006 5:11PM]

"...it requires the custom-built EnviveOS to utilize all eight TV tuners"

Should read "...it requires a few changes to the registry in order to utilise all eight TV tuners". Instructions on how to do this are freely available on the internet, and theoretically there is not limit to how many tuners you can get MCE to use.

[GhostDoggy @ Sep 16th 2006 5:17PM]

How many people are currently laboring into recording NTSC analog off the air on their personal computers? While I know quite a few people into PC-based OTA recording, its pretty much restricted-effort for ATSC digital television (a la HDTV). Sounds like product fluff reporting to me.

Also, considering that broadcast HDTV at 1080i is topped out at 19.2 Mbps (2.4 MBps), I would think any reasonable software, operating system, and 1GB of RAM or less could handle four streams at once in recording. I mean, isn't basic IDE throughput on the order of 33MBps?