What is a Media Center PC? I’m talking its fundamental essence, its Platonic Form? Is it a personal video recorder? Is it a DVD player? Is it a hub for all your digital media? Is it a PC?This seems to be a difficult question to answer, not least by those who are actually building MC PCs. It’s apparent that a MC PC can be any or all the aforementioned things, and maybe it’s this fact that makes answering this question moot in itself – it doesn’t have a single fundamental essence at all.

Microsoft certainly doesn’t seem to be helping matters. It offers a wealth of information to system builders, helping them to create better MC PCs, but this information also assumes a broad approach. It talks a lot about specs, TV tuners and video decoders, and it even talks a bit about form factor. But these guides tend to dilute their message by talking about MC PCs for three very different environments – the study, the living room and the laptop – each of which have very different parameters.

Then there’s that ever-present argument that Media Center might as well just be slapped on any machine that would normally run Windows XP Home. Sure Media Center can bring some extra functionality to XP Home, but if Microsoft is trying to carve a niche into the big and alien world of consumer electronics, this kind of ‘PC that happens to run Media Center’ mentality is only doing it harm.

Personally, I see Media Center’s fundamental essence, and greatest strength, in the living room, with its core functionality being to watch and record television.
Give it dual high definition tuners and a few hundred gig of hard disk space, and an electronic programme guide (of course), and you’re well over half way to building a compelling proposition for the living room. Its secondary role is as a digital hub, with all other features, including Internet access and other PC applications, being firmly tertiary.

In this guise, a Media Center PC is a truly impressive addition to your living room, albeit still an expensive one. But there’s one last, and major, hurdle to overcome before MC PCs take over our living rooms – form factor. I’m continually amazed at the shapes and sizes in which MC PCs are presented to us – all invariably ugly and large. Now, I know that hardware standards make it difficult to innovate with form factors, but it’s not rocket science to get creative with PC design. I do hear a lot of PC assemblers complain about PC chassis, noisy cooling fans, big crunchy hard drives, so what are the alternatives?

Hmmm, let's see. We need components that are not only compact, but are designed to operate in close spaces with limited ventilation. We also need devices that consume less power, thus generating less heat, thus requiring less active cooling. But they also need to have decent levels of performance too. Well blow me down, that sounds a lot like notebook hardware to me! It’s like one of those pantomimes – with perplexed PC manufacturers on stage, and us pointing to the notebook hardware shouting ‘it’s right in front of you!’.

So there’s my challenge to a PC assembler: build a focused living room Media Center PC, using notebook parts, that packs in at least two standard definition digital tuners, an EPG and 200GB  hard disk space, and make it no bigger  than a slim DVD player. If it comes in under a couple of grand, then it’s sure to be a winner.