Review Evesham's first attempt at a Media Center PC, the eMedia, was, to be honest, far from perfect. But the UK PC maker learned from the mistakes it made, and went back to the drawing board. The result of that redesign is the machine in front of me now, the e-box, writes Riyad Emeran.

One of my major criticisms of the eMedia was that it just looked like a desktop PC, rather than a media PC - so much so that it wouldn't even fit under a TV properly. The e-box is a completely different proposition and would look far more at home in your living room. Evesham took much of what I said onboard, and has designed the e-box to look more like an AV device than a PC; in fact the form factor is pretty much identical to my Pioneer DVD player. This means that the e-box will fit snugly under your TV or on your home cinema/Hi-Fi stand.

The e-box definitely looks good from the front and it's unlikely that any visitors to your home would even realise that it was a PC if they saw it in your living room. The front fascia is constructed from a solid billet of aluminium and has a brushed finish to it. The round power button on the right is also made from aluminium and has the "Power On" symbol embossed onto it. Next to the power button is the obligatory blue LED - is it even possible to construct a consumer electronics device that doesn't have a blue light anymore? Maybe it's against the law. Below the power button is the infrared receiver for the Media Center remote. I still can't understand why Microsoft chose to go with infrared instead of RF for the Media Center remote, and when I recently asked someone at Microsoft this question, it seemed that they were just as baffled by the decision as I was. I am however, very glad to see that the infrared receiver is built into the chassis this time, rather than being external like it was with the eMedia.

On the left you'll find a slot loading optical drive which looks pretty sleek in the silver fascia. Now, although Windows reports this device as a DVD-RAM drive, when I tried to write to a DVD-RAM disc, the drive was having none of it. It told me that Windows could not recognise the disc and that I needed to format the disc before Windows could use it. Unfortunately, no amount of formatting or erasing could convince Windows to write to a DVD-RAM disc. This e-box is an early prototype so I would hope that Evesham will have this problem sorted by the time units ship to customers. Below the optical drive is a good array of connection options - there are two USB 2.0 ports, a six-pin FireWire port, a microphone socket and a headphone socket.

Other than the front fascia, the rest of the case is finished in matt black, with grilles on either side and the top to service the internal cooling fans. When you look at the rear of the e-box you can instantly see that this machine is running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 - taking up two of the blanking plates are twin TV tuner cards. The original version of Media Center only supported a single TV tuner. The single tuner meant that you couldn't record one TV programme while you watched another, seriously limiting the versatility. With twin TV tuners, this problem is negated and Evesham has gone the whole hog and installed twin DVB tuners from Black Gold. Of course, the problem with digital tuners is that it's an all or nothing scenario - so you either get crystal clear reception or nothing at all, and in the poor reception area of Bracknell you're going to need good tuners. With this in mind, it's clear that the Black Gold tuners are excellent, since I managed to get superb reception, even in Bracknell. Of course I wasn't able to receive the full spectrum of digital channels because of the poor reception area, but when I used the e-box at home it happily found each and every Freeview channel and displayed them in all their digital glory.

As far as hooking up the TV tuners goes, Evesham has covered all the bases for you. If you have a very good external aerial, you can simply use the aerial splitter supplied and pump the signal through to both tuners. However, if your TV signal is a little on the weak side, Evesham also supplies a two-way signal booster and some pretty nifty gold plated cables - this probably contributed to the great reception I received, and it's good to see that Evesham is considering those poor souls in bad reception areas..

Next to the TV tuners you'll find an ATI X300SE graphics card with 128MB of RAM on-board. Now, because the e-box is a low profile device, it needs low profile cards inside. The TV tuner cards were both proper low profile PCI cards and fit perfectly, but unfortunately the graphics card wasn't a true low profile device. As a result Evesham has had to hack off part of the backing plate and then bend some of the remainder 90 degrees and try to secure it with a screw. The result is that the graphics card wasn't sitting straight, making it impossible to plug an S-Video cable in - an issue made all the more severe by the fact that the S-Video port is the only video-out option on the e-box. Opening up the e-box, I was able to reposition the card and try to secure it, but whether it would stay in place is debatable. Evesham has however informed me that all production e-box machines will ship with proper low profile graphics cards.

The rest of the ports and connectors are integrated onto the motherboard - there's a parallel port, a serial port, a D-SUB port for the integrated graphics which aren't used, four USB 2.0 ports, a six-pin FireWire port, an Ethernet port, two PS/2 ports and a full complement of sound connectors catering for 7.1-channel audio. It's a little disappointing that there are no component video or SCART connectors. I tend to use component video to connect my AV equipment to my TV, and your average consumer will probably be used to SCART cables. Of course, if you're a high-end AV buff, then you might have a large screen LCD or Plasma display with a DVI input, but I think the e-box is more suited to the average consumer who wants an all encompassing home entertainment solution.

If you're particularly sensitive to noise intrusion, you might be able to hear the e-box humming in the background. That's not to say that it's loud by PC standards, because it's not. But it is audible, unlike your DVD player. Of course I wasn't expecting it to be silent like a passively cooled Hush PC would be, after all, it has three fans in it. But I think that perhaps quieter fans should be employed to combat this issue. The mATX motherboard is of the PCI Express flavour and sports single x16 and x1 PCI Express slots, as well as two PCI slots. The CPU cooler uses heatpipes and a very large, low rpm fan, in order to keep the 3GHz Pentium 4 cool without causing too much noise. Backing up the CPU is 512MB of DDR 2 memory and a 160GB Seagate Serial ATA hard disk. With the lid off you'll also notice that the optical drive is a notebook device, employed to keep space usage down to a minimum.

Also supplied is a Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse bundle, but unfortunately the receiver isn't integrated into the box, which means that you need to have it attached to a USB port. That said, at least it's an RF receiver, so it doesn't need line of site and can be hidden behind the system case. The final piece of the puzzle is the Media Center remote, which worked flawlessly during testing, although it did need to be pointed pretty accurately towards the receiver.

So, what was the e-box like in use? Well as far as media PCs go, this is a pretty good one, and the new version of Media Center adds the polish that's sometimes missing from media PCs that use third party environments. That's not to say that things were perfect. When I wanted to play an album from the My Music section, Media Center insisted on playing every track twice. Dropping down into the Windows desktop I examined the actual album folders and found that there was definitely only one of each track in there. I assume that this is a Media Center bug, rather than a problem with the Evesham though, so I'll check on the next machine I get in running 2005.

For me, the biggest advantage with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 is the support for dual tuners, but there are a few other new additions that make the environment a little bit slicker than it was before. For a start, the main menu selections now have a short history trail to them. This means that if you scroll down to My Videos, the last three videos you watched will be instantly selectable without having to actually dip into the My Videos environment.

Another feature that Microsoft was keen to talk about at it's Media Center preview was "Online Spotlight". Online Spotlight gives you access to websites that have been tailored to the Media Center environment. Normal web browsing does not lend itself to the "10ft Experience" - this being the environment of you sitting on your sofa with your TV around ten feet away from you. As such, Microsoft is working with web content providers to construct tailor-made sites that are easily navigable with a remote control, rather than a mouse and keyboard. This is nothing new, and at CES earlier this year Philips announced a deal with Yahoo! to create tailor made content for its Stremium TV platform. How successful Online Spotlight is will depend entirely on how many sites Microsoft can convince to sign onto the project.

Of course, Online Spotlight requires Internet access, and brings me back to my usual gripe with Media PCs. Most people don't have their broadband set up in their living room, so you will need a way of connecting your Media PC to your broadband. Since most consumers won't want CAT5 cable draped through their house, the obvious answer is wireless functionality, but unfortunately Evesham hasn't included a Wi-Fi adapter in the e-box. This is a real shame since it wouldn't add a lot of cost, but would add a lot of functionality, both for Online Spotlight and EPG download. In fact the best solution would be a wireless bridge like the Netgear WGE101, which makes any device with an Ethernet port wireless compatible - this is ideal for a living room environment since you can use it for your Xbox and PlayStation 2 as well.

I'm generally not bothered by seeing PCs without modems inside them these days, since the broadband is finally starting to see mass adoption. However, the lack of a modem in the e-box does mean that you can't make use of one of the more novel features in Media Center - Caller ID. If you have a modem in your Media Center PC and it's plugged into the phone line, you can configure it to display the phone number of the incoming call on the screen for you. This means that if the phone rings when you're watching a movie, the caller will be displayed on the screen, letting you instantly decide whether to ignore the ringing or pause the movie and answer the phone. I'm not going to criticise Evesham for not installing a modem though, since despite the novelty of Caller ID, I'd rather have the twin TV tuners.

The big problem with any media PC, is that it doesn't lend itself well to the low, interlaced resolutions of a television, so unless you have a large LCD/Plasma screen or a projector, you're never going to fully appreciate the environment. But, the whole point of Windows XP Media Center Edition is to create a device that blurs the boundary between IT and consumer electronics, so it's going to have to integrate with standard TVs as well as it can, since that's what most of the population are still using.

All in all Evesham should be congratulated on two counts - for learning from the mistakes it made with its first Media Center box, and for having a twin TV tuner solution ready to ship on the launch date of Media Center 2005.

However, the problem with the graphics card is disappointing to see from an experienced PC builder like Evesham, and the lack of SCART support may yet prove to be a stumbling block when it comes to mass market consumer adoption.

Verdict

I like the Evesham e-box and I'm glad to say that it's a huge improvement over the eMedia that I looked at last year. Unfortunately, it's still not quite perfect. The attention to detail needs a bit of work and a single SCART connector for pumping sound and video to a TV will make it more consumer friendly.

Note

Evesham has informed me that in the production e-box systems, a motherboard with three PCI slots will be used. The customer will then be able to choose between a modem or 802.11g Wi-Fi adapter as an option. Also, a SCART pack will be available to give users SCART functionality.

Recent Reviews

ALK CoPilot Smartphone
Sony Vaio Pocket VGF-AP1L digital music player
Toshiba Gigabeat F 60GB
Dell Axim X30 Wi-Fi PocketPC
Biometric IBM ThinkPad T42
PalmOne Wi-Fi SD Card
Motorola E398 mobile phone

Visit The Reg's Review Channel for more hardware coverage.