Philips has entered the Media Centre PC market with the MPC9350i - which it claims is the ultimate home entertainment unit, offering music and movie playback, twin TV tuners, hard disk-based PVR functionality and wireless internet access.
The MPC9350i uses a 3GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB of memory and has a 250GB hard drive on board. It runs with Windows XP Media Center Edition. It has twin TV tuners, so you can watch one channel while recording another - however, they're both analogue, so you'll still need to buy a separate digital receiver. Which stops it from being an all-in-one really.
Programmes can be saved to hard drive or onto the optical unit, which supports dual-layer DVD±R, single-layer DVD±R/RW and CD-R/RW for read and write. There's also an eight-in-one memory card reader, four USB 2.0, two six-pin Firewire and one four-pin Firewire ports. The box has an 802.11b/g Wi-Fi adaptor and a port for 10/100Mbps Ethernet networks. It's got SCART, RCA, DVI, S-video plus standard audio and video ports.
Shipping with all necessary cables and adaptors, including DVD-to-HDMI and SCART-to-S-video, plus a remote control and wireless keyboard, expect to pay around £1,000.
There's a full review of the MPC9350i over at Gadget Centre
Via The Register
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Who are the morons that put togther the spec for these units.. what is the use of any PVR type unit without at least 2 Freeview tuners? Why would anyone buy anything with an analogue tuner anymore?