Phillips Media Centre PC's for peanuts!

iamnew

Hello everybody,

I think this is a bit of a bargain. It's a media center base unit, with a good spec:

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.0Ghz
200GB, 7200RPM hard drive
1Gb DDR PC400 RAM
DVD-Rom Drive
DVD-Writer Drive
(2 separate drives for easier disc-disc copying, copyrights permitting)
ATI Radeon X600 256mb graphics card with TV out
Stunning sound
56Kbps Modem
10/100 LAN
USB 2.0
Keyboard & Mouse
Microsoft Windows Media Center2005
6 month RTB warranty

All in all, for the price of £485 i think it's very good. But they're also doing free delivery at the moment.

Hope this helps everybody looking for a powerful machine, but not wanting to spend lots of money. Oh, and before somebody comes along and says that it can't play games - it can; it's got a decent graphics card with it's own memory as well as 1gb of RAM. I've bought one for the kids (14-18), just so they can play some games, as well doing homework etc. The only thing is that it doesn't have a monitor, but they can be picked up cheaply enough - but they also say that they're giving some away if you buy one of these.

Hope this helps.

MORPH3US

Sorry, but where is this from?!?!

Would be interested to hear from some techies if this is worth my hard earned...

M

shianatika

iamnew wrote:

Stunning sound

A little vague on the technical specs of the sound card!

IMO I don't think its anything special for the money

kraven

Surely this is cheaper from Dell and it would come with a monitor !

knight_2

I thimk these are better deals from Currys. They are by Philips, but are reconditioned units.



# Intel Pentium 4 640 Processor HT Tech

# 3.2GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2Mb Cache
# 1024Mb DDR RAM
# 250Gb Hard Disk
# M-Format Dual Layer DVD Re-Writer Drive
# 256Mb Power Colour ATI X550 Graphics
# 6 USB connections
# Built-in TV Tuner + Remote Control
# Wireless Keyboard + Mouse
# Microsoft Windows XP Media Center
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/384705

£399.97




# Intel Pentium 4 519 Processor
# 3.06GHz, 533MHz FSB, 1Mb Cache
# 512Mb DDR RAM
# 160Gb Hard Disk
# M-Format Dual Layer DVD Re-Writer Drive
# 128Mb Power Colour ATI 9250 Graphics
# Built-in TV Tuner + Remote Control
# 6 USB connections
# 802.11g Wireless Network Ready
# Microsoft Windows XP Media Center

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/733371

£299.97


HTH

MORPH3US

That £399 Philips looks ace to me, is it any good? I wanna be able to play decent new games!

M

timmo44

iamnew wrote:

Hello everybody,

I think this is a bit of a bargain. It's a media center base unit, with a good spec:

Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.0Ghz
200GB, 7200RPM hard drive
1Gb DDR PC400 RAM
DVD-Rom Drive
DVD-Writer Drive
(2 separate drives for easier disc-disc copying, copyrights permitting)
ATI Radeon X600 256mb graphics card with TV out
Stunning sound
56Kbps Modem
10/100 LAN
USB 2.0
Keyboard & Mouse
Microsoft Windows Media Center2005
6 month RTB warranty

All in all, for the price of £485 i think it's very good. But they're also doing free delivery at the moment.

Hope this helps everybody looking for a powerful machine, but not wanting to spend lots of money. Oh, and before somebody comes along and says that it can't play games - it can; it's got a decent graphics card with it's own memory as well as 1gb of RAM. I've bought one for the kids (14-18), just so they can play some games, as well doing homework etc. The only thing is that it doesn't have a monitor, but they can be picked up cheaply enough - but they also say that they're giving some away if you buy one of these.

Hope this helps.

Hello Iamnew. You didn't actually mention where this system can be bought from... Let us know.

Also, be warned when entering PC system deals on here. You will nearly always get a handful of replies from IT techies usually stating something like:

'I built a better one than that myself using only my left hand in the dark while juggling chainsaws and it only cost threepence ha'penny WITH a 32" 0.0008 nanosecond response time flat screen, 4 terragigabyte RAM and a built-in time travel drive.' Bless 'em.

Thanks :-)

Doublespresso

timmo44 wrote:

Also, be warned when entering PC system deals on here. You will nearly always get a handful of replies from IT techies usually stating something like:

'I built a better one than that myself using only my left hand in the dark while juggling chainsaws and it only cost threepence ha'penny WITH a 32" 0.0008 nanosecond response time flat screen, 4 terragigabyte RAM and a built-in time travel drive.' Bless 'em.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

knight_2

Here are the links through Dixons:

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/733371 @ £299.97

http://www.dixons.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/384705 @ £399.97

As mentioned above, Egg are offering a 10% instant cashback if you have a Egg card and buy before the end of July by using the link on the Egg website.

Egg T&C and link here: http://new.egg.com/visitor/0,,3_87199--View_1858,00.html

You cannot use Quidco and Egg instant cash back at the same time, as the link on the egg website is a affiliate link and you must go through that link.

Woody

The £299 one is VERY good value.

I have built myself an MCE machine from components (Dell base unit, MCE licence, Remote, TV tuner etc, etc) and it cost me a lot more than this.

Key points to note:

1. It says it comes with a remote - and shows what looks like the proper Microsoft MCE remote - which is very good - you really need this.

2. It says it comes with a digital freeview tuner - again, very good.

3. The disk size at 160GB is plenty - you can record a couple of weeks viewing on that.

4. Memory is OK - you can manage with 512MB, and the processor is also fine - in normal operation, MCE doesn't need too much grunt (I use a Celeron and it hardly goes above 20% utilisation).

5. It has a Radeon 9250 video card. This is the lowest Radeon card that MCE will work with - so it will be fine. BUT, it doesn't say what the outputs on the card are. You may be lucky and find that besides VGA, it has Svideo and DVI - but I wouldn't bank on it. For a Media Centre in your living room showing on your TV, unless you have a large Plasma or similar with VGA connections, you need some way of outputting to the TV. IF this thing doesn't have Svideo out (most TV's accept Svideo on the scart) then the good thing about Radeon cards is that, if you are prepared to accept the risk, you can make or buy cables to convert the VGA out into RGB for a scart. Here is a link to start you off: http://www.idiots.org.uk/vga_rgb_scart/. (you can't do this with nvidia cards).

[If it does have svideo out - and your TV only shows a black and white picture via the SCART - this is a link that you really, really need: http://camp0s.!!!!!!/sVideo/sVideo.htm]

6. The only other thing you need to check is that it comes with all the software (besides MCE) that you need:

a) An mpeg codec - because output from the video card is an mpeg stream that gets played in Windows Media player, and Media Player doesn't come from MS with this as default. This should be included. However, something like PowerDVD will install a codec that should work OK if you get stuck.

b) MCE writes all it's recordings in a format called DVRMS. You can't just write this out to a DVD and have it play in a normal DVD player (although DVRMS files written to the DVD will play in Windows media player in other PC's). You need software to convert DVRMS files to that which a DVD player can read. This is NOT included in MCE but most manufacturers of MCE PC's will include appropriate software that will do this - normally a product by Sonic so this should be installed already.

My conclusion: Go for it - it's a very good offer indeed.

t@xman

Just noticed that EGG have a 10% cashback on https://www.dixons.co.uk for this month, so was taking a peep round their site when I found the reconditioned PC section, and if you look you'll see a whole range of quite decent spec Philips Media Centre PC's starting at about £299........combine the EGG cashback with the NHS 5% and free delivery code and you got some real bargains there!

So, you could get a branded P4 3.06Ghz, 512mb, 160gb, WinXP-MCE, MCE remote, wireless, with built in digital TV tuner for around £255 delivered!!!!

This would be ideal to sit under the TV, or great if you have a home cinema projector!