S1Digital intros P500 Media Center, updates ProLine Series of HTPCs
By Darren Murph 
posted February 5th 2009 8:08AM
posted February 5th 2009 8:08AM
posted February 5th 2009 8:08AM
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i'll build something equivalent or better for far cheaper
Me too. Its funny how companies offer ridiculous prices and people buy...
$5,999 sans tuners? GTFOOH!!!
Go get a refurb gateway VMC, ya bad company, but I'm up and running a great media center out of the box for $320!
Yeah, but can you build one with full Crestron, AMX, RTI, HAI and PC based-touchscreens over IP or RS-232 support? I doubt it.
This thing reads like it has $1,000 worth of parts. I think a guy could build this with his eyes closed at Newegg for so much less. I absolutely love the "silent heat pipe" design with three fans on the back. It would be great to hear this baby spin up, those miniscule jet engine fans on the left. Big and ugly, the only way to move air.
It looks like a bunch of lackluster hardware. I wonder what kind of software they are using. I tried using Vista media centre but my it wasn't very user friendly. Mediaportal was somewhat better. The HD-playback in Vista wasn't anygood but after switching to XP it works like a charm. (phenom 2.1ghz triplecore and hd3200 integrated.)
If their software is great a bump up in price is justified, but 5k is not a bump, more like a soar!
I can't say I think the case looks too good either. When it comes to fans, my HTPC has 4. One on the seasonic PSU, one boxed AMD cooler and 2 smaller casefans similar to the ones on this HTPC. My HTPC isn't audible, but that's probably because the PVR from my cable company is noisy. I can't wait to throw it out!
At the very least they could have used some 120mm fans. Tiny fans have to spin a lot quicker to move the same volume of air as a big one.
Not impressed...... unless I can Rip my blu ray collection @ Full Quality and use a GUI to watch them.... and I'm sure it's not DTS-MA or True HD sounds like a waste of money
As long as you have the storage, ripping it is no problem. With the right soundcard and software you get HD-audio too.
How does CableCARD work? Do you buy a CableCARD from your cable company? Do they have any in Canada?
CableCARD (if I am not mistaken, please correct me if I am) is the thing you get from you cable company when you sign for their services. I don't know if they send you a new card each month or if they pre-code it into the tuner you get from them (that little box you connect to your TV, the one you plug cable into, sometimes it also has a slot for a card, that would be CableCARD, right?)
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=CableCard
CableCARD is just another reason why people pirate content. What a pain in the ass for the end user. Compare that to firing up uTorrent and downloading your latest show. I swear to God the media industry just wants to fail.
Actually, i think it looks pretty good. Notwithstanding the price of course. If you read the press release, it says they support the HD audio formats with an add-on option. (@Bogaty - I think the silent heatpipe design is the P600, not the one pictured above...)
It's targeted at professional use and it runs Windows Vista? *Laughs...*
Windows Vista works great as a HTPC, you just have to have a system capable of running the bloated code. I run Vista on both my HTPC's and it works great. I am, of course, looking forward to Windows 7, a.k.a. "What Windows Vista should have been".
you all forget, you cant buy a cable card tuner, you can ONLY get them on oem machines, and dont work in home made machines even if you swapped em.
ATI makes a cable card tuner
If one can get anything in OEM product, one can find another one who sells it in retail. Except that won't be the retail you're used to.
And yes, I CAN buy a cable card tuner. They're not sold in the retail stores but I know companies you sell those.
The man speaks truth. Talk about how you can build one yourself for cheaper all you want, in the end you can't buy CableCARD tuners to put in your own HTPC. The cable companies are only allowing OEM companies to place them in their products, I would imagine a lot of the cost associated with this box has nothing to do with the hardware in it and everything to do with the cable company agreement.
@Navysandsquid
Only an external one to my knowledge, internal would be much better.
I believe the external unit still requires a proprietary bios on yur machine to operate. So im pretty sure there is no way to get cable card support on a pc without buying OEM
"Intel's latest Core 2 Duo processors" means what? Latest models of core2duo? Because C2D isn't latest. And C2Q isn't latest either. Core i7 is.
Hilariously Expensive. This is an off the shelf computer, with a boxed Vista installation.
"Pro" using a $187 Intel desktop CPU?
A Quick and Dirty Estimate through Newegg:
Motherboard: $140
CPU : $187
4GB Ram :$80
3xTB Drives : $330
ATI All in Wonder $150
Blu Ray Drive :$120
Mini Keyboard $130
Case/PSU/Cooling etc : $300
Total: $1437
S1 : $5999
you also need a HDMI AUDIO/VIdeo out and if it does HD Audio you need a ASUS HDMI AUDIO card 187.00$
Navysandsquid
Depends on PC. Yoiu can get a video card (build-in won't do for Blu-ray, they aren't powerful enough, tomshardware investigated that matter) with HDMI, and those usually also have audio-in on the card so you can connect your sound card to video card and use HDMI for sound.
But personally I don't see any point in this. Why not simply plug the sound system directly into the PC itself???
THERE IS NO HD AUDIO OPTIONS WHICH IS SAD FOR THAT PRICE.
5.1 audio out. You need anything else? Oh, you're one of those who think WAV is a format with horrible sound quality and want MORE?
I bet you would also buy Monster HDMI cable for $10000 to make sure it doesn't get interference from other Hi-Fi components around it...
DUDE there is a 5000% difference between DTS-MA and 5.1 through optical hdmi or analog do a little research before you try flaming!
And I'm not that Familiar with Cable cards
I have THREE computers running Vista Media Center connected to a Windows 2008 64 bit server hosting 4.5 terabytes of media. Vista works GREAT for this. XP blows compared to vista for this task.
I use a $29 ATI 4350 video card. It is fanless, thus quiet, has 1080P 30 fps output and Uncompressed audio out thru HDMI (1.3 stardard)
It works awesome. Ever person that comes to my home is blown away… videophiles and clueless both.
Thank being said .. 6 grand is insane. But if you don’t have the know how… a turnkey solution is nice.
The problem with that setup is getting good LIVE content. Sure you can have oodles of ripped DVDs, Blu-Rays, home vids, but without CableCard, Live content is less than elegant.
I'm in the same boat, extremely quite HTPC, networked with huge music and video collection with SageTV. However, I still need an set top cable box to tune in live content or just stick to free OTA content.
The only thing making boxes like this expensive is CableLabs and CableCards. I swear they're doomed to fail.
If all you want is a prebuilt computer which does HD then what about CW-4000HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv1EVsE4s-0
It's $449.00 on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/CaptiveWorks-CW-4000HD-CW4000-Captive-Works-4000-HD_W0QQitemZ370146476548QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ20090118?IMSfp=TL090118119004r24269
I see no reason to not be able to install w/e OS you want and add additional tuners for w/e
"...starting at a staggering $5,999"
And it's butt-ugly!
I went to S1DIgital and configured the setup here with 4 CableCard tuners and "Price as configured $6,998.00". This is way too high.
I have been researching HTPC configurations for a while and unfortunately CableCard is locked up in OEM land. But for those that say they can build it cheaper you are sorta right. Use the HP m9500t series build it with minimal options and a CableCard OS with dual tuners. Since the motherboard is ATX (I can not confirm the ATX mobo I am only repeating what I have read) you can transplant into many HTPC cases and build it as you want. You just have to make sure you get a fully operational CableCard system. But If you like S1Digital they have a special offer for The Green Button members that uses an older setup but still gets up to about $3500.
I would say watch for HDHomeRun they are possibly entering the encrypted digital broadcast market. /me hopes so...
This is just my opinion.....
Wow that cablecard thing is a problem. I guess it never dawned on me, PC watching TV, the tuners are all digital, but don't include HD - because the tuners can't decrypt the cable signals. And then all the twisting up in their own underwear over OEM stuff.
Well a quick google of that topic, and it all circled back around to where???? ENGADGET HD!!!!
http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/09/24/cannon-pc-starts-offering-internal-cablecard-tuners-for-sale-sep/
It's funny when you look at that picture - sort of resembles the back side of this $5000 monster. Yeah the article says $300 per card. I don't know, I'd almost buy a TiVO HD, bust it apart and take the two cablecard deals out of that baby ($250 all in, two cablecard slots). Oh yeah, sure it would take a lot of work and fun. Or shoot, just use the TiVO.
Taking CableCards from something else won't work. They're tied to the specific device via security checks of the hardware present.
If CableLabs allowed $200 cable cards in ANY HTPC, you'd probably see satellite companies fail in 2 years. But... they're too stupid to do something like that.