| Big-name PC vendors are moving into the living room with component-style systems such as the HP z555 and the WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410. These two systems in particular are excellent Media Center PCs, but they differ little from these companies' other offerings, aside from the case lying flat instead of standing vertically. They're purchased via retail or directly from the Web, they include the same parts as mainstream PCs, and they're backed by a standard, lackluster PC warranty. If, however, you're more interested in a professional-grade home-theater experience, there are high-end, specialty system builders that take a different approach to selling you on the idea of integrating a Windows-based PC into your living room setup.
Instead of buying off-the-shelf or configuring a system via the Web, each of the three companies in this roundup--Creature HTPC, Niveus Media, and S1Digital--will talk to you over the phone to customize a machine to your exact specifications, then work with a home-theater installer to get you up and running without incident. In addition to supplying nontraditional (in a PC, anyway) audio and video ports, the three systems here offer standout features, such as a completely fanless (read: silent) case and embarrassing amounts of multimedia storage space measured not in gigabytes but terabytes. Unfortunately, while the service is hands-on, the warranty terms aren't much better than you get with Dell or Gateway.
Then there's price. All of this hands-on service and professional installation comes at a cost. The three systems here range from $2,500 to more than $6,000, and none can claim to offer the latest bleeding-edge PC components.
Ports before power
Truth be told, recording and playing back TV signals and DVDs is not the most processor-intensive thing a computer can do. Most Media Center systems can get away with being relatively underpowered. But we were most surprised to find not a single dual-core CPU among the bunch.
All three systems have audio and video inputs and outputs to spare, however, including some options we've never seen on a PC before. The Denali had the most impressive array of connections, which might leave casual consumers scratching their heads (what's BNC?), while the otherwise high-powered Scylla S301 surprisingly lacks an HD TV tuner. Although, we would add that recording HD content is a chore few would take on at this point, involving setting up an over-the-air (OTA) HD antenna to pull in signals. This is in large part a problem with the Windows XP Media Center OS and other media front-end programs, which don't currently support HD recording from cable or satellite sources--only OTA signals.
| | Niveus Denali | S1Digital Media Center | Creature Scylla S301 |
| Video in | | | |
| S-Video | Yes, 2 | Yes, 2 | Yes, 2 |
| Coax | Yes, 2 | Yes | Yes |
| HD coax | Yes, 2 | Yes | No |
| Composite RCA | No | Yes, 2 | Yes, 2 |
| Video out | | | |
| DVI | Yes | Yes | Yes, 2 |
| VGA | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| S-Video | No | Yes | Yes |
| Component | Yes (BNC) | Yes | No |
| Audio in | | | |
| Stereo RCA | Yes, 3 | Yes, 2 | Yes, 2 |
| 1/8-inch line in | No | Yes (shared with 7.1 out) | Yes, 2 |
| 1/8-inch mic in | No | Yes (shared with 7.1 out) | Yes, 2 |
| FM coax | Yes | Yes | No |
| Audio out | | | |
| S/PDIF/Optical | Yes | Yes | Yes, 2 |
| 7.1 1/8-inch | No | Yes | Yes, 2 |
| Discrete 7.1 RCA | Yes | No | No |
Other than wide-ranging A/V connectivity options, each system boasts standout features. The Niveus Denali, the priciest of the bunch, is about as solidly constructed a system as you'll find. It weighs a staggering 60 pounds and is basically a giant heat sink--and deathly quiet. The Creature Scylla S301 serves up the most storage of the bunch, with four 250GB drives amounting to a cool 1TB of space, plus a separate 80GB drive for programs. It also provides a speedy graphics card with Nvidia's high-end GeForce 7800 GTX. The S1Digital Media Center has fewer bells and whistles than the other two systems, but it's by far the most affordable.
Sounds of silence
One of the issues living room PC advocates take very seriously is system noise. In the home-theater environment, the thinking goes, no one wants the picture-perfect movie-watching experience ruined by the sudden squeal of a hard drive.
We were so interested in the benefits of silent PC operation that we devised a suite of acoustic tests to measure how loud these systems actually were. We set up a simulated viewing environment and armed ourselves with a decibel meter, then we put each system through its paces, performing tasks such as recording TV signals and playing DVDs, and we measured the audio output at every turn.
Media Center sound-level testing (Shorter bars indicate quieter performance)
The scores are in dBA (A-weighted decibels) and represent the systems' loudest and quietest performance.
CNET Labs conducts its noise-level testing in a room designed to minimize the amount of outside noise seeping into the room. The average ambient noise level of this room is about 33.7 dBA. We use an Extech 407750 sound pressure meter to measure noise levels. We can measure only those noise levels that are louder than the ambient noise in the room.
Decibels are not a constant scale, but a ratio between two sound levels. More informatively, the human ear perceives a doubling of loudness with every 10-dB increase.
All three systems were relatively quiet compared to some of the overclocked enthusiast desktops we've reviewed, but even the relatively modest differences in the dB scores were audible to the casual listener. Niveus takes the idea of the silent PC to the extreme, with its heat sinks, thermal pads, and heat pipes, creating a system that is almost completely silent, except for the faintest drive noise. The Creature and S1Digital systems are louder, but not distractingly so, thanks in part to sturdy construction and sensible fan placement. The Creature generated the most noise--virtually identical to our control system, a BTX-based Dell Dimension 9100. Read the CNET editor's take Related links
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