HP trumpeted the release of its new Pavilion Media Center TV m7300 series PC this morning. A desktop media center, the M7300 series is HP's foray into the new world of certified media PCs. Featuring different models, some m7300-series systems will conform with Intel's new Viiv program, and others will come with AMD chips (although not with AMD's new Live branding, announced by AMD this morning and set to debut in the latter half of 2006). Other specs include a TV tuner card, up to 2GB of DDR or DDR2 memory, and up to a 500GB hard drive.

We're all for giving customers choices, but the CPU agnosticism makes us wonder if being Viiv certified really makes a media PC all that special. You can find out for yourself later this month when the m7300-series systems hit HP's direct sales Web site and the various retailers. Prices start at $770.

Article discussion: HP's new Media Center PC plays it both ways