HP Digital Entertainment Center z556 - PC Magazine
by Kevin C. Tofel 
posted Feb 24th 2006 at 8:30PM
An Intel Pentium 4 running at 3.0 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GPU is also under the hood; specs that are close to what we cobbled for less. PC Mag gave the z556 four out of five stars, mainly because it does the basic job of recording your OTA high-def and because it's $500 less than last year's overpriced model. We say: do it yourself if you can; there are plenty of good spec'd out systems from our very own readers.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dining @ Feb 25th 2006 7:05AM
It rocks. I have my complete 400 DVD movie collection entered into it with complete box art and details. I have over 11 days worth of music on teh HD and plenty of space to go. I love the remote record add-on that is free from Microsoft. Essentially my entire entertainment experience is in one box.
FuEl @ Mar 1st 2006 9:36AM
On paper the unit has the right details.
But after three units, horrible tech support from HP and Compusa, and being asked a a couple of dozen times "Are you sure you are hooking up the cables right?", I just returned my unit for a refund.
Steve @ Mar 17th 2006 12:25PM
I bought the DEC z556 because I wanted the form factor and really could not price out evrything it had much cheaper DIY box. The features built in was great. I was excited until I got the My TV service hooked up. I use Direct TV and have a Phillips Plasma EDTVnd Sony V33ES receiver. Video quality was fine as I am not overally concerned with HDTV at this time until I upgrade the TV. Here is tthe problem. There is no digital audio in, so I plug RCA audio from Direct TV settop box (I have tried 2 of them now) and the Optical Digital Audio out to my receiver and the audio quality from Live TV only is terrible. I tried HP support and they are idiots, no understanding of Home Theater, just computers. Needless to say I am on my second box and will be returning it (probably for a 15% open box fee) with no idea how to correct this problem. If anyone knows of a good TV Tuner card with Digital Audio in please let me know.