Went into PC world today as a guy at work needed a new HDD, and while he was paying for it I noticed a display in the entrance with a big screen so went to have a look. They had a "MEDIA CENTRE DISPLAY" going on, with a 27" widescreen LCD tv/monitor (had built in side speakers) and what I thought was a VCR sized DVD player. Turns out to be a media PC made by a company called AVENT. Very sexy looking black gloss case, and it was horizontal, rather than vertical like normal towers, and literally was the same size as a VCR, or hifi amp, etc...

Had a 250gb HDD, 1gb RAM, P4 3.0gHz processor, DVD-RW drive, on board sound (think it was 5.1) and wifi connection. Waht was nice about it was all you could see on the front was the DVD loading drive (to the left) centre display (much like a DVD player display) and then underneath those were three pop down covers - left had AV socket input, S/PDIF audio in, and a couple other connections, centre had a multi card reader and something to do with a TV RF connection (looked like a button tho) and can't remember what was on the right one. The centre one also had normal DVD player buttons - play/pause, stop, forward, back, skip/search etc. Came with a nice volume remote, a channel/dvd remote, and a wireless keyboard + mouse... All in all it seemed a real nice unit..

Price was amazing tho - the screen was only £399, and the Advent PC thingy was only £300!

The only thing that'd put me off it tho is a) no second CD/DVD drive (so no copying CD's) and b) don't think it had twin tuners (had a built in digital TV card, but think it only had one, so you could only record the digital channel you are watching - can't record one and watch another, or record two at the same time. Not sure if it has "pause live TV" but you can record TV onto the HDD, so you probably can....

Anyone know anything about these? Seemed pretty good to me, had a little play with it (for some reason tho it wasn't connected to a TV aerial ) and the sound and picture was great! Looked really really nice aswell, which is soooooo much better than the normal PC tower's you get.

Can't find any info on it on the web, or even on PC worlds site.... Anyone shed more light?

 

With the single drive, you can still "backup" cd's

 

Dan - I know, but it wouldn't be as usefull as a "dedicated" PC would it? No space for 2nd HDD, no space for second CD/DVD drive, etc....

But nevermind, I went back to PC world today to have a proper nose at it, and somehow I managed to get my prices mixed up. It's not £300, it's SAVE £300, cost is £699 I thought FUCK THAT For less than half the price you can buy a twin tuner PVR, upgrade the internal HDD AND buy a DVD recorder And STILL for less than the Advent you could add a decent 5.1 AV amp to power your surround sound - the only thing you wouldn't have is internet, which considering I have a dedicated, decent spec PC, I don't really need anyway...

Still can't find any info on the web, but I did find out it looks pretty much the same as this;




Except the Advent doesn't have a big volume knob on the right hand side (it has a remote one instead)

 

Does that include the 27" screen ? If it does, sounds like an unbeatable deal, if it doesn't, well, it's only a PC in a VCR case

 

No, screen is £399, Advent Media Centre is £699 - so together they are £1098....

 

Still not a bad deal considering the price of lcd/plasmas, but I would bet the screen's resolution isn't all that

 

I was watching some hi def video demo's on it and I thought it was super fucking clear Maybe cos it was running from the PC? PC was in 1280x768 mode (might have been 1280x720) and the PC was connected to the LCD using a normal 15-pin D-sub (SVGA) pc connection, and it was still stunningly clear! I couldn't even imagine how it could be better if it was connected with the DVI output!

They also had a bunch of other LCD's in there aswell, including a very nice Samsung 37" for £999 and the same Samsung model but in 40" which costs £1399..... Both had superb picture, tho the 37" was nicer (I think the 40" just needed a good set up, and it was being slaved off a patch connection, rather than hooked directly into a PC/tuner...

 

Not being funny mate. Ask if they would open it up. Advent usually have very good hardware inside of them. The newer ones were always really good as they only usually put oem XP on rather than packard bell/others which cramp with a load of shit demo software.

Dunno what they are like now a days though.

 

i got a 24 inch dell screen from ebay for 599 FLAWLESS

it plays hd films from the usa via limewire PERFECT

with the extra money left you could build a good spec pc

with overclockers site build your own

 

I really want one of those 24" Dell widescreen monitors - actually I want a pair, but I just can't justify the cost for em