HP shows it's second gen Media Player PC's at HE2005

May 3, 2005

This years
Home Entertainment 2005 Expo was held at the fabulous New York Hilton
in beautiful downtown Manhattan from April 30 through May 1. Unfortunately, CD
Freaks was not there in any capacity to provide the hard hitting
journalism that you all enjoy so much. Not to mention the after hours color
commentary that is so crucial at such gatherings to give us all a sense of the
local flavor. However, the folks over at Ultimate AV were there and in their
report we can read a bit about a rather nice "Digital Entertainment Center" -
AKA Windows Media Center PC, from HP.

Another HP introduction was the second-generation of their Digital
Entertainment Center, with three new models: z552 ($1500), z555 ($2000),
and z557 ($2600, shown here), all available now. These are basically
Windows PCs in AV-component-type cases, but the user is shielded from
Windows by the Media Center interface. New features include
high-definition recording from the internal ATSC tuner; there are also two
NTSC tuners. All together, you can record three different shows while
watching something else playing from the hard disk.

Speaking of hard disks, all three models include 300GB internal drives
and a bay that will accept a second, hot-swappable hard disk called the
Personal Media Drive (the silver thing on top of the main unit in this
photo), which has increased in capacity from 160GB to 300GB (with 400 and
500GB not far behind). As if that weren't enough, the DVD recorder will
record on DVD±R/RW, including the new dual-layer blanks, and it also
includes HP's LightScribe technology, which uses the write laser to burn a
label on the other side of the disc.

Well, that's kind of cool. If you are into home
theater or high definition TV, you should pay a visit to the Ultimate
AV site to see some other equipment that was on display and read what they had
to say about it. This years show covered high-end audio and video with
the latest in "convergence technologies" for the home. The show was held on 5
floors, with about 250 brands in approximately 80 demo rooms.

Source: Ultimate AV