HP's Media Center PC with CableCARD for $1250
by Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Oct 26th 2007 at 3:28PM
We didn't realize this was news, but after we discovered that Sony was selling ATI's CableCARD tuner for $300 by it's lonesome, we realized how few people knew that you could buy a Media Center PC with a CableCARD tuner for less than $3000. We agree that $300 for a CableCARD tuner is out of control ridiculous -- especially compared to a TiVo HD which sells for the same price and has dual CableCARD tuners -- but to go around and pretend like they only work with "expensive" Media Center PCs is ridiculous. Sure it sucks that it costs $300 and that you have to buy it with a OEM like HP or Dell just to get it, but we for one are just glad they are a reality, now if only DirecTV or Dish would make a tuner like this for Media Center.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John @ Oct 26th 2007 3:59PM
Not really news, months ago you posted the same thing....
Kevin @ Oct 26th 2007 4:18PM
Ben,
Earlier this week HP had a $400 off coupon for that model, making it even more attractive. The problem with HP is that they had only offered 1 DCT. Now Sony makes it alittle more attractive.
Kevin
Zach @ Oct 26th 2007 9:37PM
Why doesn't Directv make a card that works with cablecard PCs? I'd be all over it once they did.
MegaZone @ Oct 26th 2007 11:04PM
$1250 isn't expensive? Considering what you get, and what you *can* get for that money if you don't pay the Media Center Tax, I think it is. You could build a PC a lot more powerful for the same money, or get the same power for less - but then you don't get the special CableLabs blessing to access their content. For $400 off, as mentioned above, that's not too bad. But even the 'cheap' Media Center PCs are expensive PCs. For $1250 you could get a TiVo HD, three years of Service, a PS3, and have money left over - for the eSATA drive for the TiVo, some games, movies, etc. You'd have a good high-def dual tuner DVR, a Blu-ray disc player, and a premium game system.
If you get the PC, it is still a PC - are you going to put it by your TV? Or do you need to buy a Media Center Extender (or 360) now too? And it is still single-tuner, so there's the $300 for the other tuner. Are you going to use it for other PC tasks - and hope it doesn't interfere with DVR recording and playback?
And the biggest argument against Media Center PCs - laptops are taking over the market. People want PCs they can take with them. A laptop Media Center PC is a terrible idea - if you take it with you, what is home recording your shows?
For $1250 you could get the TiVo, ($250) 3 years of service ($300), and an OK laptop with the $700 left over. (Or put that towards a nicer laptop.) ;-)
Even cheap Media Center PCs are expensive compared to the other options.
Matthew Desario @ Oct 31st 2007 12:21PM
I'm a Media Center user (MCE 2005) and I agree with almost all of the posts in some fashion.
It's been said ad nauseum, this thread is great, I read it all--now to my opinion.
Content company's want to protect their HD content. They constantly re-release on better and better mediums (VHS, DVD, HD-DVD) and the consumer purchases again. Many of these decision makers in the content industry aren't programmers, they are executives, lawyers and producers. They all know what a Tivo is and they all know what a computer is. They know they (their company's editing department use the computer when they edit their content, so when they think of delivery to a computer, they get worried that they've just given their highest quality "master" to the public. Their familiarity with computers means they know how to burn a CD or email a file, and if they've given away their master, what have they retained?
I know there is technology to assuage these fears (dvr-ms, drm, broadcast flags, etc) but these are all things that were developed in response to their fear of the PC. You can't burn a CD from a a Tivo and you can't email a file.
** I know there's a DVR with a DVD-R from Phillips and maybe a few other companies, but I also know it can't burn High Def video and it's also not a very popular product, and it's not HD at all)=. I also get that Tivo is Linux based and you can hack the HR10-250 (HD DirecTivo) and turn off the encryption and transfer files to your computer, you may even be able to do some type of console based email from a command prompt, but that's obviosuly not a mainstream feature and my focus is on the mindset of the content providers, not what is technically possible for a power user. **
So when Microsoft was like, hey, we'd like HD content on our PC, I can imagine they got nervous and that's where a lot of the hoops that MSFT has to jump through came from. So I imagine it's harder for Microsoft to make content makers as comfortable with them as they are with Tivo, because Tivo can push themselves as a closed box, whereas the nature of the computer means it's a more open system. I know it's a very simplistic summary, but if I had to stand on something to change a lightbulb for my wife, and I had two choices:
1) a wood box
2) a dolly with wheels, but the wheels were absolutely in the locked position
I would choose the wood box, not because it was safer, but because I have a vague understanding of wheels and what they can do, so I'd irrationally stay away from the thing with wheels, no matter how immobile it is.
Anyway, that's why I understand the DCT mess and lack of DirecTV Tuners, DVD Streaming. It seems like the last 9 months of delayed DCTs and unstable DCTs is a top-5 concern. It looks like people are saying the firmware update resolved a lot of issues. That's great. That usually happens about a year after the stuff is first available.
The other common theme I see is the monetary comparison between MCE and Tivo. I just bought a Prius for my wife for 30K. It has four wheels, radio, AND air conditioning. It goes as fast as you can legally drive in the US easily. It also can drive backwards at slower speeds.
My friend, idiot that he is, paid 9 times as much for a Mercedes SL. It also has four wheels, and a radio. I'm not sure but I think it may even be able to drive backwards as slower speeds. It only has 2 seats too, can you believe it? I couldn't deal with a car with 2 seats because I have a daughter and another on the way. I'm so glad that I don't own his clearly inferior car (more money, less seats, worse consumption, higher insurance).
That's kind of like comparing Tivo to Media Center or Media Center to Apple TV or Media center to radio. I tried watching Lost as I drive to work and it's not very user friendly. (User friendly wasn't the exact wording that was used by the person I rear-ended, but suffice to say they they agreed that using Media Center while driving was not yet a good idea. Anyway, I'm making a joke and probably pulling myself away from my core argument which is that different people are willing to pay different amounts of money to fill their different needs. I already contacted Mercedes inquiring when the 4 seat hybrid 25K SL would be available that I'd like to be put on the notification list but haven't heard anything back. IF Tivo works for you, get Tivo. If you like MCE, get MCE. Hey, get both and consume your content on whatever you want. That's what I do. I have MCE, Tivo, and a DirecTV DVR. I used to have an MP3 player, Zune, and digital camera. Now I have an iPhone. Only once, after drinking alot, did I ever call up Canon and demand they includes GPS phone functionality on their next camera. I still have the digital camera. I use it less. I have a Sonos system at my house to control my music. I can do it with the Media Center if I want to, but in my experience these all in one devices never do a great job at anything. Never. That's why I kept my digital camera, and why I bought the Sonos. The iPhone is more convenient, as is using one controller/interface for my TV and Music. But I get a better overall experience from the digital camera and Sonos.
I agree with the MSFT guy who commented on how big Microsoft is and how its difficult to get projects with multi-year lead times to operate with each other. I think that the Zune and Media Center should use the same system, and it would have been nice if it happened right away. I'd love some Microsoft feedback as to why they ultimately chose to use a separate application for the Zune. I'm not mad, and I don't even use the Zunes anymore (one got stolen last week, so there is definitely still a demand for the product) but I'm curious as to why they didn't come out with WMP 11.1 to support Zune or phase out WMP and call the Zune software WMP 12. That's just my curiosity, because I'm sure they thought about it.
1) HDTV input support - QAM. DirecTV. Dish whatever they use around the world for HD
* Also, how does the slingbox now have component input? That would be awesome in Vista. I'd take a component video input with optical in in a second over HDMI or Cable Card.
2) I don't really care about the DVD changing thing, but if it was easy I might do it. I think VIDEO_TS is code for DECSS-ing my NetFlix movies so I doubt this can happen legally, unless you use the 200 disc DVD changer.
3) Remote scheduling would be cool.
4) Soft sled would be nice in my office, where I'm typing this.
5) I don't do MPEG4 on the Xbox, but I've read a lot of people who want this. I'd just like to play a DVD in the Xbox without jumping out of the Media Center UI.
6) More tuners out of the box. For my house it's great. Some of my clients, (your clients) want the same stuff as me at home, and they have huge houses. The president of DreamWorks TV has only 3 TVs but during pilot season he's recording 4-5 channels at a time, (unfortunately for MSFT) on DirecTivos.
7) My take on the hive vs client/server is that Microsoft is moving towards a hybrid of both in the next 10 years (I know that's a long time, but I'm being realistic). They've made clustering in Windows 2003 R2 very easy and GUI based. It's even easier in 2008 RC0. I think that the Remote desktop way of connecting extenders will be replaced by Virtual thin clients as virtualization technology makes in way from Windows Server 2008 into the successor to Vista. Then, you won't have to worry about codecs and differences between extenders and the server pc. I also think that the ability to provide the VMC server service as a clustered fault-tolerant service will allow the combination of tuner and storage resources from multiple machines AND the survival of the hive if one or more servers go down. It might now happen but since they have clustering, shared resources, active directory and distributed file system, history has shown me that all this stuff trickles down into the consumer space.