HP Pavilion Media Center M8150N Desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600, 3 GB RAM, 640 GB Hard Drive, HD DVD Drive, Vista Ultimate)

The hardware part of this package is great. There are too many extraneous and confusing "garbage" apps preinstalled. I'm still cleaning them out. Vista still has a few glitches, as in the power management options, but I expected that. Still an awful lot of computer for the price.

The speed and memory of this system is incredible. It is the fastest system I have ever used, let alone owned, to date. I can run multiple "memory hungry" graphic and video software programs (Adobe CS3 Master "Master" Collection) at the same time with no slow down or hesitation. I also like all of the programs that come with the system that allow me to schedule and record a TV show, edit out the commercials and burn it to a DVD. I can also plug in virtually any analog or digital still, or video, camera and save it to CD or DVD.

I have the (now defunct) HP Pavilion Desktop Model m8040n bought from Amazon.com with $150 rebate. It turns out to be about the same price as this new(er) model with virtually the same H/W specs, except this model has the new "quad" Q6600 processor and 8400 nVIDIA graphics cards. My older model came with Intel's "6420" Duo (dual) processor core and nVidia 7600GT graphics card, but otherwise the same.

The only problem I've had is with the HD DVD drive. It had a loose power harness connection inside the case, and does not work when playing any HD DVDs with my so-called Vista "certified" and 100% HDCP compliant digital display. However, it works properly after I reconfigured the graphics card to output in analog mode through a VGA interface cable.

Fortunately, my 24" Samsung LCD monitor (also purchased from Amazon.com at a good price) supports both display modes, and both in 1920 x 1200 high resolution. I found out quite by accident (Thanks HP) that my HD DVD drive - actually made by Toshiba - lacked the latest firmware update. I downloaded this from the Cyberlink website and purchase their Ultra PowerDVD ($100). Unfortunately, neither fixed my digital display problem with HD DVDs.

The TV (dsual) tuner card has one rather irritating deficency which this 8150 model may have also. There is no adaptor provided, nor a way internally to interconnect both the analog and digital inputs together from one F-connector coax TV antenna cable. I live in area with good, multiple channel, "OTA" digita TV reception, so I just decided not to use the system's built-in analog TV tuner.

Something important to any decision to purchase a new "Vista" PC is something called the Performance Experience Index. This is a new rating system exclusive to Microsoft Vista operating systems. Since this PC comes with Vista "Ultimate" and has a high performace 2.4GHZ quad processor and newest generation graphics card, even the average person would probably like to know what rating they are getting in a new PC.

The PEI is based on a rating scale of 1.0 to 5.9, from worst to best possible performance. The overall rating is derived from five sub categories, where the lowest individual score determines the overall rating.

To find out this machine's PEI rating, go in to the Control will be pleasantly surprised that this model PC scores near the highest possible score, meaning the "guts" of this machine are all excellent for high performance PC applications. This will make you glad you bought a desktop instead of a megabuck laptop with similar bells and whistles but nearly as good overall performance.

When I reformatted my dual 320GB HDDs to be in the RAID 0 configuration, my PEI (for the individual performance rating dedicated to HDDs) went up
to the highest rating (5.9). I also replaced my graphics card with a slightly faster adapter and got another slight boost in performance for gaming applications (increased from 5.4 to 5.5). Desktop graphics performance for Vista 3D Aero was already at the highest PEI (5.9).

This model has an nVIDIA 8400, although a newer generation chipset, I suspect the graphics performance has been slightly compromised in favor of support for Vista's DirectX 10.0; but YMMV.

Overall, this is a solid machine with a rich feature set and a wide range of multimedia capabilities, that should more than satisfy all but the most enthusiastic power PC users.

Computer is great now because it works. But before it worked, I had to call HP technical support because the computer did not start up after I hooked everything up. This was a new computer. I found out that it was a video card problem after a couple of hours. What a waste of time. So, what happened? UPS and Amazon mishandled the shipping of my computer. They must of not cared that much because when I received it my 56k modem card was pushed in and not in its slot and the video card had to be adjusted also (found out after speaking with HP support and going through all their list of how to fix the problem). Also, no screw for the modem card found anywhere. I definitely will never order anything this expensive from Amazon again because if I have to return the product, I will have to wait another couple of weeks for an exchange. I just feel as if I got a refurbished computer and not a new one because problems came with it. This is the reason for the 2 stars. Obviously, Amazon will probably just point fingers at somebody else and say it was not there fault.

I've spent the last few days setting up the M8150N. So far, so good but there are a few surprises.

First off, I've seen comments on similar grade PCs about how loud the fans are on media center PCs. Right now I have it on a table top about two feet from my (aging) ears and it runs silent. It's a quiet workstation.

The second thing to point out is that this is a very up-to-date computer. No serial ports, no parallel ports, no RGB socket. In other words unless you have adapters, none of your old stuff will hook up. Fortunately there was an RGB adapter in the box so my old ViewSonic flat screen plugged in and works fine.

Third, the HP documentation is very generic. Meaning, it illustrates where to plug in the monitor and printers. Problem is, they don't exist on the back of the PC. It would have been nice if the HP documentation mentioned there was an RGB adapter in the box.

Fourth, I was impressed with the hard drive space - 640 GBs. While the diagnostics showed I had two 320 GB drives, my C drive showed as 50 GBs. At first I thought the DVR worked like TiVO and took up the space with a special format. I was wrong. I got online with HP and found out that there was 138 GB of unformatted space on the drive partitioned for C and E. The tech walked me through the formatting and I then had a new L drive.

Unfortunately the story goes a little more down hill. The image shipped with the 8150 left that 138GB hole in the hard drive. While I was able to get the space back, the tech is sending out a set or restore DVD. HP, he explained, does not support a non-standard image (even if it was there mistake I guess.) Bottom line, if I restore the O/S, good bye to all my updates, documents and installs. So before you do anything, check your disk space.


(Some more information: The tech support rep could have had me go another way. Using the disk utilities I formatted the open space and expanded the "C" drive. Fixed the situation. Just depends on how savvy the tech is.)


Fifth, the Media Center TV control (DVR) was pretty easy to setup. However, it was late at night and I couldn't get it to recognize my remote controller for the satellite cable box. The reason I point out it was late at night is that after a good nights sleep I realized I was pointing the remote at the wrong infrared receiver. Whether it was poor documentation on the part of the Media Center Setup guide or the fact that I don't do my best computer work at 2am I leave for the readers to debate.

Six, the transfer utility that Vista provides is very basic. It proved to be easier to network the two computers and do my own transfers. My home has structured wiring I have several computers. If you're replacing your current PC with any new one and you can't network them, well, it won't be fun. One option is thumb drive transfers. That will keep you busy.

Oh, a few other reminders. The HD drive is read only. I hope its format sticks around and survives the war with Blue Ray. The ability to burn DVD from captured media sounds great but remember that the Media Center DVR won't write a protected program or movie to your DVD.

Anyway, with the rebates and all the bells and whistles, this is a heck of a computer. But my adventures are only three days old so I will update this review if anything else fun happens.

Update:

I've also found some new quirks in the past few days. The DVR, when recording from my satellite tuner, can't make use of the Digital Coax. I have to use my RCA jacks. This problem was confirmed by HP support.

Another little strange event is that the DVD drives think all DVDs are enhanced DVDs. (The HP techs tell me that enhanced DVDs are HD.) This makes for a small problem if you choose (or if Autoplay chooses for you) the enhanced DVD player. It won't work.