While the epithet 'multimedia PC' used to be bandied about to over-hype any PC in the mid-'90's that was capable of playing music, rudimentary video, and games, the descriptive was overused so much on sub-par PCs that the impact of any real multimedia capabilities was diminished in the wash of pretenders.
But now with DVD and MP3 playback standard; surround-sound audio and speaker sets becoming default purchases; the slow crawl towards really cinematic gaming meaning that PC gaming is getting more immersive; the slow rise of PVR functionality and TV tuning; plus people using the Internet to download more games, more movies, more songs, and more files, the term 'multimedia PC' is more apt than ever, although in a slightly different skew than it was originally used.
Though 'multimedia PC' turned into the concept of the 'digital hub' (a more modern concept for integration of a PC's multimedia capabilities into the home, and heralded by big IT companies as the next coming wave), these 'digital hub' concepts have finally transmuted into a final product segment - the Media PC.
In the US and Europe you've been able to buy Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre Edition machines for quite a while, but not here in Australia and Asia. Which makes HP's pre-XP Media Centre Edition pavilion t380a quite an interesting machine. Featuring a standard Windows XP Home installation, the t380a does everything a Media Centre Edition PC does, and with a remarkably similar interface to Media Centre, thanks to Intervideo's Home Theatre software (more later).
As a PC, the pavilion t380a stands tall with a decent fit-out. It has a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor with HT (533MHz FSB), 512MB of DDR SDRAM and a 120GB 7,200rpm hard drive which is quite a reasonable configuration, but it gets better. The unit also comes with an ATI RADEON 9200 graphics card, two optical drives (one a DVD-ROM, the other a DVD+RW/+R burner), a 17in TFT monitor, cordless keyboard and mouse, integrated 5.1 surround audio, a six-in-one card reader faceplate (CF, SD, MMC, SM and MS/MS Pro), plus two FireWire and six USB 2.0 ports (two front, four rear). And there's more (but we'll get to that later).
In SYSmark2002, the machine returned a score of 212 overall, with 364 in Internet Content Creation and 124 in Office Productivity. While not the most astounding scores we've ever seen in our test Labs, they're still quite respectable and mean the t380a will be able to coast along with any home applications you run on it. For gaming, the system didn't do as well, with a 3Dmark2001 SE score of 4,602 - again, not astounding but passable for most home gaming needs.
This peformance is all good for applications and gaming, but the pavilion t380a's ace is in its media capabilities. With the Intervideo Home Theatre software running you can leave the keyboard and mouse behind, sit back and operate the PC via the bundled remote control.
The interface is rather simple (see the screenshot), but quite effective. From this basic menu you can scour the hard drive for MP3s, photos, movies and more, to create music and movie playlists, plus image slideshows. It's fairly basic, and although it may irritate the advanced WinAmp/DivX maestro it's perfect for families, beginners or for those looking for a starter media PC. The RADEON 9200 graphics card also comes with a TV-out port, so you can forgo the system's TFT and just use your existing TV.
Which brings us to the best media function of the pavilion t380a, which is its TV-tuner capabilities. Coupled with the system's 120GB hard drive this means that the pavilion t380a is a PVR-in-a-box (personal video recorder), with the ability to set times to record programs. Better still, it also has time-slip functionality, so you can pause live broadcasts, run off and make a coffee and resume the live broadcast where you left off.
All up, HP has crafted a fine machine - it's got a quite stylish design with functionality in mind. It's covered in expansion slots, comes with a great software bundle, has more functionality than you'd normally find in a PC from one of the big vendors, and is priced palatably.