Saturday, November 6, 2004
Quick Look at the HP Digital Entertainment Center
Posted by James Fee in "ARTICLE" @ 10:00 PM
"HP, in an effort to take over your living room, rolled out the Digital Entertainment Center (DEC) at the Microsoft Digital Entertainment Anywhere event. The DEC is a set-top box running the new Windows Media Center Edition 2005. It will handle photos, music, video and TV. THG was on-site for a closer look. You've probably grown up with a crowded living room. A radio here, a VCR there and maybe a few dozen records, tapes and DVDs. Wouldn't it be nice to have all that functionality in one box? Since large hard drives are relatively inexpensive, it makes sense to view and store multimedia to a computer based device. This is already being done to a limited degree with MP3 players and TV Tuner cards, but HP wants to combine everything into one easy to use platform."
Now we are talking! Those MCE towers just don't fit in with most audio racks. Kudos for HP taking care of the biggest hurdle to me buying one. The z540, with a single TV Tuner and 160GB hard drive, will have an MSRP of $1499. The z545-b, with two tuners, 200GB hard drive, 160GB Personal Media Drive will be $1999. Each Extender unit will be $299.
Now we are talking! Those MCE towers just don't fit in with most audio racks. Kudos for HP taking care of the biggest hurdle to me buying one. The z540, with a single TV Tuner and 160GB hard drive, will have an MSRP of $1499. The z545-b, with two tuners, 200GB hard drive, 160GB Personal Media Drive will be $1999. Each Extender unit will be $299.
