Entered CNET Catalog: 05/22/2003
SKU: 0766907808711
Manufacturer: ViewSonic Corp.
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Manufacturer description
More than a PC, the ViewSonic NextVision M2000 Digital Media Center couples advanced NextVision Visual Technology with Windows XP Media Center Edition and Intel technology to turn your living room into a digital home entertainment theater. With a built-in TV tuner, DVD and CD player/recorder, MP3 capability, and connections for editing, storing and viewing digital home movie and photos, the NextVision M2000 digital media center provides fingertip control of all your entertainment and computing choices from the comfort of your couch.Product summary
The good: Keyboard is wireless and contains mouse controls; top-notch, large LCD; front-panel media-card reader; plenty of ports and cables included; records TV to disc with playback on consumer DVD players.
The bad: Line of sight required between keyboard and CPU tower; sluggish application performance; CPU case difficult to open.
The bottom line: ViewSonic gets off on the right foot with the NextVision M2000 Digital Media Center. We only wish it offered better application performance.
Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 05/02/2003
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| Snap the back cover on to help hide all the cables. | |
Also included are a stand and a cover for the back panel. You can screw the stand to the bottom of the CPU tower to align it vertically; the tower can also rest horizontally if that's a better fit for your home-theater setup. A plastic cover snaps onto the back to help hide the cabal of cables, routing them out the bottom and behind your entertainment unit or desk.
The front panel boasts a convenient six-in-one media-card reader, which lets you pop out the card from your digital camera and slide it into the M2000 for viewing your photos. It accepts CompactFlash (Types I and II), IBM Microdrive, SmartMedia, SD (Secure Digital), MMC (MultiMedia Card), and Sony Memory Stick formats. Below the card reader is the lone optical drive, a combo DVD-RW/CD-RW model.
 The combo DVD-RW/CD-RW drive hides behind the silver ViewSonic panel. Above it is the six-in-one media-card reader. |
 USB 2.0, FireWire, audio, and video ports located up front for your convenience. |
Less convenient than the media-card reader is your ability to get inside the M2000's case: you'll need to supply your own Allen wrench for any future upgrades. We were also disappointed to find only three USB 2.0 ports, though one is located up front along with a FireWire port, S-Video and composite video connections, a stereo analog audio port, and a microphone jack.
Juggling the twin entertainment and computing duties of a Media Center PC isn't easy, but ViewSonic makes a good first step by bundling the NextVision M2000 Digital Media Center with its VX900 display. This 19-inch LCD is the right size screen for the job--large enough for TV and DVD viewing and small enough to accommodate any work in Windows with crisp text and icons. The bundled ViewSonic wireless keyboard, with comfortable built-in mouse controls, would be the perfect choice for a Media Center PC if it operated using RF (radio frequency) instead of IR (infrared), which requires a line of sight to the CPU tower. We occasionally thought that the machine had frozen until we realized that we needed to be more careful with where we were pointing the keyboard.
If you plan to use the M2000 as your primary PC, you'll want to invest in a mouse and a productivity suite. The keyboard's mouse controls work well with the oversized buttons in the Media Center environment--much better than a mouse would when you're not seated at a desk--but they're a bit unwieldy if you are trying to land on a small button in Windows or a link in Internet Explorer.
 The VX900 flat-panel display is the right size for a Media Center PC. |
 If the keyboard were RF, we'd say it was the perfect match for navigating the Media Center OS. |
The M2000 did, however, freeze up from time to time in our tests. While using the Media Center interface, the system locked up on occasion, especially when we were using the onscreen TV guide. In fact, performance was sluggish overall; we experienced latency while opening windows when we had only an app or two running. This should not happen on a system with a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of PC2100 DDR SDRAM, a 160GB 7,200RPM hard drive, and a GeForce4 MX400 graphics card. True, the hard drive gives you ample room for TV recordings, and the MX 440 card was more than up to the task of running Unreal Tournament at a resolution of 1,280x1,024. But we expected perkier overall performance from a 2.8GHz P4-based PC. And, unfortunately, ViewSonic currently sells only a single configuration without any customization options.
The M2000's software offers more quality than quantity. ViewSonic doesn't include a productivity suite, unfortunately, but does bundle Sonic MyDVD 4.04 and RecordNow 5.0 for watching and recording DVDs. While the Media Center OS gives you TiVo-esque qualities, such as the ability to pause live TV and schedule recordings of shows that it then saves to your hard disk, it doesn't give you the option to archive that content to DVD. That's where Sonic MyDVD comes in. Though you must exit the Media Center environment and find the folder with the video files that you created, MyDVD 4.04, with the M2000's combo DVD-RW/CD-RW drive, lets you burn DVDs that are playable in consumer DVD players. The M2000 is the first Media Center PC we've tested that bundles MyDVD 4.04, a requirement, we think, for anyone looking to purchase this type of PC.
Application performance
Our ViewSonic NextVision M2000 evaluation system had the slowest application performance of any Media Center PC we've tested to date. Its SysMark score of 232 is curiously low when you consider that the M2000 has a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, which, along with that of the Cyberpower system, is the fastest chip we've seen on a Media Center PC. Its application performance is more indicative of a 2.53GHz P4-based system--disappointing results but still enough muscle to handle the demands of today's office tasks
Application performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark2002, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver).
3D graphics and gaming performance
The M2000's GeForce4 MX 440 graphics card is a strong performer and should aptly handle nearly all of today's mainstream games and family titles, but serious gamers who are looking to play the latest game titles (and future titles such as Doom 3) with all of the advanced graphics features enabled are in for a disappointment: the M2000 just can't pump those pixels like systems with faster 3D graphics engines can, such as the Alienware Navigator Pro Media Center, with its Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200-based graphics engine. Still, the M2000's MX 440 card performed well, in part because it is an AGP 8X version, and will suffice for today's casual gamer.
3D graphics performance (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure 3D graphics performance, CNET Labs uses Futuremark's 3DMark2001 Pro Second Edition, Build 330. We use 3DMark to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8 (DX8) interface at both 16- and 32-bit color settings at a resolution of 1,024x768. A system that does not have DX8 hardware support will typically generate a lower score than one that has DX8 hardware support.
3D gaming performance in fps (Longer bars indicate better performance)
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To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Quake III Arena. Although Quake III is an older game, it is still widely used as an industry-standard tool. Quake III does not require DX8 hardware support--as 3DMark2001 does--and is therefore an excellent means of comparing the performance of low- to high-end graphics subsystems. Quake III performance is reported in frames per second (fps).
Find out more about how we test desktop systems.
System configurations:
Alienware Navigator Pro Media Center
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.66GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 64MB; Western Digital WD1200JB-00CRA1, 120GB, ATA/100, 7,200rpm
Cyberpower Media Center PC
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.8GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 128MB; Western Digital WD120JB-75CRA0, 120GB, ATA/100, 7,200rpm
Gateway Media Center PC
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.53GHz Intel P4; 256MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 128MB; Western Digital WD120BB-53CAA1, 120GB, 7,200rpm
HP Media Center PC
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.66GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 MX 420 64MB; Seagate ST3120023A 120GB 7,200rpm
ViewSonic NextVision M2000 Digital Media Center
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.8GHz Intel P4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; Nvidia GeForce4 MX 440 64MB; Maxtor 4A160J0, 160GB 7,200rpm
ViewSonic backs the NextVision M2000 with an average one-year parts-and-labor warranty (the VX900 LCD is covered for three years). However, the company does offer one of the better user manuals we've seen, and that's impressive, since the M2000 marks ViewSonic's first attempt at building and supporting a PC. The manual outlines all of the included ports and cables and, better yet, diagrams a few sample home-theater setups that will help you connect the system to your receiver, TV, cable box, and so on. ViewSonic also includes a Windows XP Media Center Edition manual to help you familiarize yourself with the OS.
ViewSonic's online support, on the other hand, is less helpful. It consists solely of a "virtual chat agent" that seems to know nothing about the existence of the M2000 Digital Media Center. Although Digital Media Center is listed as a topic, any and all questions that we asked about the system returned the same response: choose between LCD or CRT monitor, projector or plasma device, or mobile and wireless device--none of which describe the M2000. Best to stick with phone support, which, thankfully, is toll-free and available 24/7.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 User Rating: 
1/10
Horrible product Slow & Loud!
Pros: Small nice Design
Cons: LOUD , Extreemly Noisy ! I Can hardly hear my Tv Audio over the din, 2 or 3 LOUD Fans Going at All Times Case Design Is Not Openable/Voids Warranty Overheating issues Overheats and Shuts Down Every 2nd Boot SLOW This has A Slow 5200 rpm Hard Disk! Sluggi
Review:
