Software for the Ultimate Couch Potato

Depending on how you think about it, the Media Center PC is either a computer
that doubles as a television in an office or dorm room or the core of your home
entertainment center. With the release of a new version of Windows XP Media
Center Edition on October 12, Microsoft has made its vision clear: It wants to
take charge of home entertainment.

Media Centers are high-end PCs equipped with a TV tuner and a version of
Windows that adds a program guide, the ability to record shows to the hard drive
and to copy the recordings to DVD, and other entertainment-oriented goodies.
These capabilities are wrapped in a user interface that lets you hold a TV-style
remote while seated across the room and operate the TV and DVD player, show
pictures, or play music. While there have been major enhancements, especially in
TV quality, since the Media Center appeared two years ago, the basic features
haven't changed much. But PC makers, working with the new edition of the
software, have added multiple TV tuners, so you can view one show while
recording another. You can also watch and record high-definition television, but
only over-the-air broadcasts, not cable or satellite. (For more on HDTV issues,
see www.businessweek.com/technology/.) The most important addition may turn out
to be the Media Center Extender, a device costing $300 or less that lets you
send content from a Media Center PC to TV sets in your house. (I'll take a
detailed look at the Extender next week.)

Media centers come in three types. Most are standard desktop PCs with added
entertainment features, such as the Dell Dimension 8400, which starts at $1,138,
including a 17-inch CRT. Dell plans to make Media Center features optional on
all of its home desktops. These features range from audio-only offerings in PCs
lacking the processing power to handle TV to high-end desktops with three
built-in tuners. You can also get a Media Center notebook from Hewlett-Packard
or Toshiba. In fact, Toshiba has created a brand, Qosimo, dedicated to Media
Center laptops, starting at $2,599 for a model with a 15.4-in. wide-screen
display. But the most interesting models are PCs, such as the superquiet
Alienware DHS I tested (starting at about $1,700), that are designed to look
like part of a home-entertainment system.

Media Centers are high-end PCs equipped with a TV tuner and a version  of Windows that adds a program guide

The newest Media Centers can handle up to three tuners: two for standard
television and one for over-the-air digital TV. The goal is to allow
simultaneous recording and live viewing, or to let you watch two different live
and recorded programs-one on the Media Center and one on a set in a different
room using an Extender. Setting up a show for recording is a simple matter of
selecting it on the electronic program guide and clicking record on the remote.
Saving recorded shows to DVD is also easy. As for viewing, you can watch on a
computer display or use a variety of outputs to connect the Media Center to
standard TVs, or to the latest wide-screen digital displays and surround-sound
audio systems.

All Media Centers are full-fledged Windows XP computers. But computer makers
say that many Media Centers, especially those designed for living rooms, nearly
always involve clicking a remote from across the room while sitting on a sofa,
or what Microsoft calls the "10-foot interface." In this sort of
setup, the Media Center PC is overkill, since there's an awful lot of Windows-and
a lot of hardware devoted to it-that sits idle. And yes, your Windows-powered
TV may crash. But while other companies have tried to market simpler devices,
nothing I have seen has come close to Microsoft in terms of integration or ease
of use. In fact, most of the products I've looked at remain stuck in trials or
have died without ever reaching the market. And no one has anything like the
Media Center Extender.

After years of hassles with Windows, I wasn't eager to let it take over my
TV. But the fact is, Media Center and the Extender do the job-and do it well.

in BusinessWeek. Copyright 2004 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc