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There was a time when Home Theater PCs, or HTPCs had to be big, pwoerful systems with fast processors, enormous hard drives, and room for a couple of TV tuners to record live TV broadcasts. And while there’s still definitely room for those systems, a few developments have led to a surge in low power nettops that are about hte size of a Nintendo Wii and which look an awful lot better sitting next to your TV than a gargantuan box with a PC stuffed inside.

First, a growing amount of digital media people expect to consume can be either streamed or downloaded from the web, so a TV tuner is increasingly optional. And second, NVIDIA has shown that you don’t necessarily need a powerful processor if all you want to do is watch (or even transcode) high definition video. You can pair an NVIDIA ION chip with a low power Atom processor and build a low power HTPC that costs less money to run and takes up less space.

Personally, I still have a larger PC with a Core 2 Duo processor dedicated to recording live TV shows and compressing the recordings to DiVX to save space on the hard drive — something that’s difficult to automate on an ION-based system. But I also use Hulu Desktop, Boxee and other online video services to catch up on programming that’s not available over the air, and I could totally see picking up a media center like the Tranquil T7-MP2.

Tranquil PC is a UK-based PC maker, and the T7-MP2 is a new system with an Intel Atom D510 dual core processor and NVIDIA ION graphics. It has HDMI, DVI, and VGA video outputs, and SPDIF and analog audio outputs. The system is also nearly silent, thanks to the passive cooling system — there’s no fan.

There are 6 USB ports and an eSATA port for additional storae space, and the nettop supports 802.11b/g/n WiFi. There’s no optical disc drive built in, but you an attach one via one of those USB ports.

The T7-MP2 runs Windows 7 Home Premium with Windows Media Center functionality, and it’s compatible with an array of US internet television services including the BBC iPlayer, SKY Player, and ITV Player.

The base model runs £479 and comes with a media center remote control, 2GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive, but you can up the specs if you’re willing to pay a little more. The Tranquil PC T7-MP2 will ship starting on May 30th, but it’s available for pre-order today.

via Netbook News.de

Valuestar N VN790/BS – that’s the name of the 3D PC that NEC today announced for the Japanese market. The company’s faster than expected: just last month, NEC teased such a machine in Tokyo, saying it’s likely to ship by October 2010. But Japan will get the PC as early as next month. And it appears to be a pretty cool machine.

Buyers will get a 20-inch 3D screen with 1,600×900 resolution and a Blu-ray drive to view content (images and video) stored in that format in 3D. NEC says for DVDs, users will be able to switch between 2D and 3D. Needless to say, the machine accepts 3D content in other forms, too (3D pictures from Fujifilm’s 3D camera, for camera).

Spec-wise, NEC throws in a Intel Mobile Core CPU (no details yet), 4GB RAM (8GB max.), a 1TB HDD, 3W×2ch speakers, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit as the OS. The main unit is sized at 490×362×169mm and weighs 8.6kg.

The PC also comes with a pair of glasses (an extra pair will set you back $67), a remote control, an integrated TV tuner, and a wireless keyboard.

NEC plans to start shipping the 3D set at the end of next month (price: $2,450). The company hasn’t said anything yet about international sales plans.

Pc TV Tuner

Somewhere between a top of the line HDTV and a laptop comes this Sony all in one. They are leaders in this market because they're essentially bringing their two strongest products together into one super “desktop”. In this review I'm taking a look at Sony's VAIO VGC-LT29U 22″ PC/TV All-in-one. This wall mountable 22″ desktop is loaded and comes at a premium. I'm going to let you know just how capable it is and if it is worth all that cash. Let me start with a few of the basics.

Hardware:

Display: 22″ LCD XBrite

Tuner: ATI TV Wonder (both NTSC and ATSC tuner)

Processor: 2.50 GHz “Penryn” Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor

Storage Space: 1 TB hard drive

RAM: 4GB RAM (un-expandable)

Optical Drive: CD R/RW DVD R RW +/- with integrated Blu-Ray Burner and reader

Graphics Accelerator: Nvidia GeForce Go 8400 graphics

Operating System: Windows Home Vista Ultimate

In the Box: An IR remote, as well as a wireless mouse and keyboard.

This truly can do everything. If you're interested in an All in one desktop television then this is your machine. The 22″ display is clear and bright. It as good as any of Sony's Bravia televisions and the integrated tuner makes sure you'll have no trouble making those comparisons. It has plenty of hard drive space with a TB of storage. This is literally your high definition Blu-Ray player, digital video recorder, computer, and entertainment system all in one killer package.

It has a great video card, the only thing that is a little unfortunate is the Penryn, in my opinion it is a little slower than I would like to see, but does its job fine here. For the most part there really aren't too many criticisms of this Sony all in one.

Connectivity:

5 2.0 USB ports (for connecting to printers, digital cameras or MP3 players)

WiFi (connect wirelessly to your LAN)

1 FireWire (connect your digital camcorder)

ExpressCard

PCMCIA

1 standard audio out as well as optical audio out and 1 mic in

1 Modem input

1 Ethernet input

1 SD / Memory Card Slot

There obviously needs to be fewer connectivity options with this desktop thanks to the integrated monitor and mount ability. You don't really want to have a lot of wires hanging off what basically amounts to a sexy piece of art. The bottom line is I can't really imagine anyone that would be disappointed in this desktop. It is going to look great in any situation, in your rec room, in your kitchen, in your living room or bed room. It will do your office work, and it will play whatever game you toss at it, it's just going to do it all. The price reflects how loaded it really is. At a fairly firm $3200 unfortunately you'll need fairly deep pockets to bring the Sony VAIO VGC-LT29U home. However if you can afford it, you'll like it.

These days, buying a decent plasma is often a lot more expensive than building your own media center. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, a media center is basically a PC that’s focused solely on media playback. Check out our PDF guide on how to set up your own media center, written by Stefan Neagu.

For the past year or so, I’ve been using Windows 7 on my media center. It’s quick, smooth, and the new Windows Media Center makes it an incredible improvement over Vista. It also supports most PCI TV tuners. Lately, I came to realize the stupidity of all it. Television shows haven’t been accounting to much lately, and the Windows 7 price tag isn’t worth it if you’re only using it for music and movies.

Enna

Although Boxee seemed the more obvious choice, it loses the high ground if you lack a decent internet connection. Just when I was about to give up hope, I heard about Enna – an incredible open source Linux media center, developed by the GeeXboX team, and ready for its first public release.

Enna can be installed on top of your Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) as a standalone app. But if you don’t want to make “the switch”, you can just use the GeeXboX live CD. You can boot Enna straight from the disk, without installing any alternative operating systems. If you want, you can even keep your default Windows installation running underneath.

Movies and Music

Keep in mind that the Enna Linux media center is a very standard app. It packs the very basic features in a most enticing and graphical user interface. If you’re looking for a surplus of widgets and online connectivity, you’re probably looking for Boxee.

That said, if you’re a standard media freak, Enna should sate your initial hunger, especially for a first public release.

Enna is great for browsing media files on your hard disk – both video and audio. You can also use Enna to pop an old-fashioned DVD. Sadly, this first release does not yet support audio CDs. This feature is promised to be included in one of the other upcoming releases, together with podcast support and VDB TV tuner functionality.

Photographs and Books

Apart from video and music, you can also use the Enna Linux media center software for photo slideshows. Next time your mother-in-law celebrates another wrinkle, surprise her and the rest of the family with a stunning slideshow. I’m not much of a picture-person myself, but I love to use slideshows to decorate a room, and create a pleasant ambience.

This last feature came as a surprise to me. In the bookstore, you can grab your favorite books and comics from the web, and read them from the couch. Enna currently supports GoComics and OneManga for content synchronisation.

Obviously, you want be able to read Shakespeare on your media center, but you can flick through a few (web)comics when you’re bored. As the names suggest, you can access both western comic panels and Japanese manga. Download Enna Media Center here.

What do you think of Enna? Or do you prefer another media center? Tell us which and why in the comments section below!

Who is trying to face down Apple’s anticipated tablet this spring?

Here’s a partial list covering tablets from larger hardware companies like Dell and HP, along with lesser-known devices and a few e-readers. The pricing details and public launch dates aren’t available on all of these yet, so we’ve provided what we know and linked to deeper reviews.

HP’s Slate computer
This video demo shows the HP tablet that runs on Windows 7. HP is also reportedly building another based on Google’s Android OS. When Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer demoed it on-stage at CES, he was spare with details and used it to read a book using Kindle software. Using the touchscreen, he swiped through the pages, then went onto Amazon, where he purchased and downloaded another e-book.

OpenPeak Tablet powered by Intel Atom chip
Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini showed off a tablet using an upcoming Atom chip dubbed “Moorestown” during his CES keynote speech. It’s a prototype with no firm dates for launch.

HP’s tablet-laptop hybrid, the TouchSmart tm2:
This kinda qualifies. It’s a fourth-generation touchscreen laptop with a swivel 12.1-inch screen that can be turned into a tablet. You can enter things with your finger, full-size keyboard, or a digital pen. It has a capacitive multitouch display that recognizes multi-finger gestures such as pinching or swiping and an aluminum case with a Riptide engraved illustration. (See Dean Takahashi’s full take on HP’s lineup here.) This laptop starts at $949.

Dell
It has a five-inch display and is supposed to complement (not be a substitute) for a conventional PC. The small size may hurt the product in the long-run, since it duplicates the feel of a smartphone instead of an actual tablet computer. The more promising features seem to revolve around connecting multiple tablet users at once — users will be able to swipe and send pictures to other tablets, or connect tablets to play games together.

ICD’s Vega
The Android-based Vega specializes in home scheduling and other basic functions and will come to the U.K market later this year with T-mobile. We covered the first appearance of the Vega back in November. Developed by Seattle-based Innovative Converged Devices (ICD), a mobile computing engineering firm, the Vega includes features that make it a solid in-home device, suited for the average family kitchen, including a 15-inch touchscreen, NVIDIA Tegra 250 mobile web processor, full HD 1080p video playback, 3G, Wi-Fi and a T-Mobile SIM card. The carrier hasn’t released pricing. (We did a longer take on the device here.)

Marvell-based Alex Reader
This dual-screen reader from Spring Design runs on a Marvell processor and has not one, but two different kinds of displays. The smaller screen is an Android tablet while the other is an electronic paper display with an LCD. It comes out next month retailing at $399.

Skiff
This is an e-reader, not a tablet. It’s an 11.5-inch device comes from a company backed by newspaper and magazine publisher Hearst Corp. It’s got a 1,600-by-1,200 pixel resolution, which is enough to view an entire page of The New York Times up-front, according to Engadget.

Asus
Another netbook-tablet hybrid here. It’s two pounds and one-inch thick. It comes with a TV-tuner, GPS and should be out in March.

Cydle M7
This Korean electronics company entered the Tablet fray this month with a $199 Android-powered device. It has a seven-inch resistive touchscreen and should come out in the spring. (See Engadget’s slightly longer take here.)

MSI
MSI has built a 10-inch Android tablet that’s based on one of the new chips Nvidia showed off this week and has a capacitive display, which is very responsive. (Engadget has more here.)

Notion Ink
Here’s another Android-based tablet from Notion Ink. It’s on a 10.1 inch Pixel Qi display (which is what Apple’s version will reportedly run on). It comes with GPS, a digital compass, an accelerometer and even water sensors. There’s a three-megapixel camera that comes with autofocus and can record video. There will be a 16-gigabyte and 32-gigabyte version. (Slashgear has a longer take on it and Engadget tests it hands-on here.)

Compal
This is a seven-inch tablet that runs on Android 2.0. Engadget gave it a pretty horrible review, complaining about the lack of GPS and Bluetooth. It also has a resistive, rather than a capacitive touchscreen, which makes it less responsive to touch.

Next Story: At last: Real photos of the Apple tablet Previous Story: The irony of Scott McNealy’s goodbye note

Pc TV Tuner

It wasn't very long ago when the only way to watch TV was with your television set. The content that you got to view was homogenized programming that followed a recipe designed to appeal to the “average viewer.” If this describes your situation, then it is time for you to discover some of the pleasant perks of 21st-century technology. Read on about the four different methods of watching television on your computer.

1) Did you know that there is a huge amount of old TV shows, movie classics and documentaries free for your viewing in the public domain? The public domain has content with expired copyrights and can be viewed or even sold by anyone. Try looking for this material on a search engine using phrases containing “public domain” plus “film” or “video”, etc. If you give the search a fair amount of effort, it shouldn't take too long to find lots of these “golden oldies”.

2) If you wish to watch the TV programming of your television set on your PC, it can be done with very little fuss with a USB TV tuner. This device is external to your laptop or PC and can be readily connected to your computer and TV set. This external arrangement is very different from that of the TV tuner card which must be installed inside your PC. Signals from your TV's output ports are transferred to the USB TV tuner input ports. The modified signals are then transmitted to your laptop or PC via its USB port. A feature common to most USB TV tuners are that TV shows can be paused, fast forwarded, rewound, and saved to your PC hard drive. Many USB TV tuners can also burn TV shows to DVD. Prices: $50 to $200.

3) Want to know a guaranteed way of getting a DVD quality image when viewing a movie on your computer? Answer: insert a DVD into your CD-ROM drive! To do this, you must download the appropriate media player with this capability. You can get one for free at Realplayer.com. Look for and click the “Get it free” button. Follow the directions after this. When you have finished with the download and installation, insert a DVD. Then start the player, open the “play” menu and click “Play CD or DVD”.

4) A popular approach to watching TV on the computer is using BitTorrent networking to download a video or movie onto your computer for free. BitTorrent networking is a sort of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system and is a common way to download movies and music. A movie that is downloaded is first broken up into several parts and distributed to the people in the network who want the movie. Everyone then supplies each other with the parts of the movie that the other doesn't have. The process has to start with a complete file to begin with. The person who supplied that complete file is said to have 'seeded' the download.

In order to download movies in this way, you need to install something called bitTorrent client software. Although there are a lot of client software available, my preference is BitComet which has been around for a few years and is free. The next step is to search for a movie using a torrent search engine such as torrentz.com. Enter a search phrase that is related to your movie such as its title. You will arrive at a page of search results. Click on the most relevant link. You should then see the movie title as well as a 'Download Torrent' link or button. Click on the link or button to start the movie download.

When finished, you should allow others to share your file by becoming the 'seed' that initiates yet another download session for other people. This is done by allowing your client software to continue running for a couple of hours.

Please note that this description is rather minimal since a thorough description is beyond the scope of this article. Also bear in mind that downloading copyrighted movies is illegal. People using peer-to-peer networks for illegal downloads have been prosecuted.

Hopefully this article has given you some idea of what is possible with a computer and a fast Internet connection. The amount of content out there is enormous. I'm speculating here, but I would imagine that it would take years of continuous viewing to consume all that is freely available. Be warned that it can get very addictive and can have a devastating effect on your personal productivity.