How’s your Microsoft Media Center PC doing? What do you mean you don’t have one? Surely you can’t think that Microsoft released an ill-conceived, badly implemented, poorly marketed, under-performing and overly expensive new technology to market? We wouldn’t allow such things to be said at PC Plus Towers. It’s all the users’ fault: how dare they want a low price, quiet operating, a living room feel and seamless operation between all their audio-video equipment. The cheek of it!

Most of the original Media Center PCs were fundamentally flawed, and the very idea of having a large, whirring metal box in your living room wasn’t the idea of 21st century living that most of us had. Technology should be invisible, instantly on hand, intuitive and easy to use, so perhaps this Advent DHE 2000 is a step in the right direction. Based in a standard hi-fi style rack-sized box, it measures 430x405x85mm, which means it’ll sit perfectly on top of an A/V amp or under your TV.

The hi-fi parallels continue with a stylish all-black front, a digital LCD panel offering play-time information on media you’re playing, and, alongside this, a fold-down flap hiding standard video controls. Of course, it also has front-mounted twin USB ports, a mini-FireWire port, analog audio-out and a memory card reader. Attempting to keep the wires around your living room to a minimum, it comes with a wireless keyboard that has a built-in joystick/mouse controller, which works well enough, and there’s an Asus 802.11g wireless network card as standard.

While many Media Center PCs are as easy on the ear as fingernails scraped down a blackboard, this Advent is like a summer breeze blowing through a meadow. Even when pushing the poor CPU with our hi-def video tests, the noise levels were barely audible. In fact, any noise was drowned out by our projector and it wasn’t even as noisy as a Qbic mini-PC. The main reason for its outstanding quietness is the BTX-style heatsink and fan arrangement: a mighty sized heatsink sits above the processor, with two low-revving fans between it and the outside of the case. It’s an arrangement that works well.

HDTV ready?
So it’s small and it looks good, which leaves us wondering if it can do the job. The Media Center 2005 interface and remote, along with the wireless keyboard, make it easy to use while relaxing on the sofa. It’ll bash out tunes and DVD movies, but where’s the pressure in that? Connected to a native 720 pixels projector watching the Alexander 1080p trailer was a joy – unlike the film itself – particularly with S/PDIF digital audio. The CPU didn’t rise much above 50 per cent usage. QuickTime 7 performed less favourably, and with 1080p media there were signs of image slow down, as the single core 3GHz P4 struggled. Even with a 2MB cache, the average usage was over 70 per cent.

As we’re seeing with other new Media Centers, this model comes with two TV/radio analog and digital tuners, both of which also offer full SVideo, composite and audio-in capabilities. This arrangement means that a programme can be watched while recording multiple channels at the same time.

Advent offers a number of variations: you can pick up the base unit alone, with the keyboard, for a cool grand. The unit is also offered as part of a bundle for £1,399, which comes with a 26in Samsung LCD TV, normally retailing for about £799. Gaming performance is negligible, with the ATi X300 struggling even with 3DMark2003 performance. Had the QuickTime HD performance been slightly better, we would have no trouble recommending this as a true living-room PC. If the mediocre SYSmark and poor 3D scores don’t worry you, this has all the ingredients for an excellent Media Center PC.