HP Pavilion Media Center m380-b Photosmart PC (3.00-GHz Pentium 4 (Hyper-Threading), 512 MB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, DVD+RW/CD-RW Drive)

Rating:
Summary: Great Entertainment Center!
Review: I just bought this computer one week and two days ago and I'm loving it! The possibilities seem endless. You can hook your TV, VCR, Camcorder, Cable Box, Digital Camera or whatever else you might want to connect. You can view your TV and record. The picture quality is good, not great on the TV. It supports the current region lock so watch out with those PAL DVDs. It can be difficult to set the TV Signal but I finally got it right. Support is good for 12 months toll free. There's quick buttons to launch the software of your choice on the front of the PC.
So far, so good!

Rating:
Summary: Good value for the money
Review: I purchased one of these two weeks ago, refurbished from eCost at $859. It looks like a new machine and came with a clean install setup. I've put it in my home office and ran a cable connection to allow for TV reception. It performs well since it has the 3.0 P4 w/hyperthreading. I'm happy with the speed. The Windows Media Edition is still a little rough around the edges. Switching from TV to PC mode has a slight pause due to control transfer of the video from the TV feed and you need to turn off the screen saver to prevent the system from turning off the monitor in the middle of your TV viewing. I love the TV record function. It's just like having a Tivo without the subscription charge. I also prefer the TV guide this uses, which comes from an internet source. It's always available and looks just like one of the Satellite type guides. I can scroll, page and look ahead to preplan my schedule. My one reservation is the quality of the TV tuner. I plan to replace it with a better quality signal in the future. Currently the quality does not match a Tivo or your TV set tuner. The only replacement that will is from Hauppage, but I expect that to change over the next few months as Nvidia and ATI get up to speed. DVD quality is excellent since that does not use the TV tuner. I also can use the DVD for backup with much greater capacity than CD's. My final consideration is the fact that this is a prebuilt system with compatible components. I could have built one from scratch like I normally would, but in this case I prefer to spend my time enjoying TV, DVD's and FM radio listening instead of trouble shooting compatibility problems.

Rating:
Summary: Not living room ready
Review: The sound on this machine is a problem (and since it is a Media Center PC, that's a big deal). The first problem with the sound is that they repeatedly advertise this machine as supporting Dolby 5.1 surround sound; however, after hours of scouring the manuals and online help, followed by multiple phone calls to HP tech support, it appears that the machine hardware is not actually capable of emitting 5.1 surround sound. (It does a fine 2.1, but that's not what they're advertising, and that's not what I paid for!) The second problem is that, because the sound is on the motherboard, every time there is a motherboard interrupt, the sound is interrupted. This can get extremely annoying during DVD playback - or any other time you're trying to use it as an actual Media Center. My advice: if you want a Media Center PC, buy one with a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card - not this one.