MSI have taken a brief hiatus from pushing their Wind rival to the ASUS Eee, and launched the Titan 700 small form-factor PC. Measuring just 185 × 240 × 70mm, the compact computer uses a Mini-ITX board complete with a 2GHz VIA C7 processor, integrated VIA CN700 graphics and 1GB of RAM. It seems particularly well suited to being a living room media PC, especially considering the low noise levels: 35dBA under load and 20dBA at standby.
Sony’s latest cookie-tin media PCs, the VGF-HS1 and HS1S “Liblog Station”, will launch in Japan on May 17th. The compact system is intended as a home server, with gigabit ethernet, support for the DLNA media sharing standard and a choice of either 1TB (the HS1) or 1.5TB (the HS1S) of storage. Media can be either accessed on the home network or from a remote location either through a browser interface or via a pre-established “data link function” that makes a non-local device appear local.
HP has apparently been working on these televisions for quite some time now and they have finally arrived. The TV’s connect to your home network and then subsequently to whatever XP MCE PC, Vista Home Premium, or Vista Ultimate PC that you have them setup to connect to and from their can stream music, pictures, and even video directly to the TV.
The award winning MAINGEAR Computers make use of their expertise in premier high performance systems integrator, announce the immediate availability of their new Axess Full HD Home Theater, a low profile media center.
Alienware launched a new High Definition Media Server built upon its Hanger18 Media PC with upgrades like Optional Blu-Ray burner, support up to four Cable cards, 1080P output and 7.1 channels analog outputs.
Looking like an up-ended keg, albeit one full of your home media, the oddly-named Moneual I*magine is an HTPC capable of pumping out 1080p, 5.1 surround sound and reacting to voice commands either through a built-in microphone or remotely via Bluetooth headset. However, it’s the straightforward and intuitive interface – presented either on your attached screen or on the 7-inch touchscreen on the I*magine itself – that has garnered the Moneual machine a CES 2008 Innovation nomination.
Well, the fall dashboard update landed yesterday at 2AM, and we’ve already covered most of the other features of the update, but one little thing that was almost snuck in is DivX/XviD support. For those not in the know, they are both video encoding formats, if you have ever downloaded a movie from a peer to peer network; chances are good it came in one of these formats.
Users of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate might be getting a Media Center update that grants them access to a beta version of an ad supported Internet TV. Finally, Microsoft is dropping something new, something worthy of a Vista upgrade.
Word is that it’s just a few TV shows, some concerts, and some movie trailers right now, all of which are ad supported. The quality is said to be “near DVD” too, which isn’t great, but just offering this service is a great start; they can work on higher resolutions later.
Thanks to an “accidentally” published preview, we knew Linksys had a couple of Vista-compatible Media Center Extenders in the works; now they’ve dropped the coy act and restored the teaser page complete with some high-res shots of the boxes themselves.
It never fails to surprise me how many companies can’t seem to manage updating their sites to schedule – either you have a recently launched product missing from the pages altogether, or something new “accidentally” goes live before the PR department would like it to. Today Linksys are the careless ones, putting teaser details of their Vista-compatible 808.11n Media Center Extenders online then whipping them down again.
SlashGear Japan
