WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410 review: WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410

WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410
If you're looking for a living room-friendly Media Center PC to anchor your home theater, fix your gaze upon the WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410. It's a top-to-bottom home-theater system, complete with a rack-mount PC case, a 30-inch LCD HDTV, and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. The PC itself costs $999 (after a $200 mail-in rebate), and the LCD will run you another $999 (after a $100 mail-in rebate). The configuration and total system cost ($1,998) closely resemble that of the similarly priced Alienware DHS-2 Media Center, with one big exception: the Alienware doesn't come with a 30-inch LCD. Indeed, the PowerSpec MCE 410 represents an incredible bargain, one with more pleasant surprises than unfortunate compromises.

For starters, there's the sexy rack-mount case, which looks right at home among stereo components. It's mostly black, with a large silver volume dial and a digital status display. The latter is a nifty perk: it tells you what mode you're in and what channel you're on, and it gives the elapsed time of the movie you're playing and other context-sensitive information--all in big blue letters and numbers. It looks cool, too.

Other front-accessible goodies include a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire port, line-out and microphone jacks, playback control buttons (in case the remote goes missing), and a 7-in-1 media-card reader. All of these items hide behind a pair of fold-down doors. Around back, the MCE 410 provides all the usual expansion ports, including four USB 2.0 and one six-pin FireWire, plus RCA stereo line-in and line-out jacks and optical and coaxial S/PDIF-out jacks. Inside the low-rise, densely packed case, there's more room for expansion than you'd expect: a full-height PCI slot (mounted sideways via a riser card), two half-height PCI slots, and a pair of open RAM sockets.

Stocked with a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 530 processor, 512MB of 400MHz DDR SDRAM, and Intel's 915P chipset, the MCE 410 has sufficient power to run Microsoft's MCE 2005 operating system smoothly. It also includes a 160GB hard drive--smaller than we'd like, but fair given the price--and a multiformat, double-layer DVD burner. Hard-core gamers may take issue with the 64MB ATI Radeon X300LS graphics card, which lacks the muscle for visually demanding titles like Half-Life 2, but the MCE 410 really isn't intended for hard-core gaming. You could theoretically swap in a faster card, but it has to be small enough (that is, half-height) to fit the case.

Similarly, the integrated 8-channel audio chip may displease audiophiles who insist on Audigy 2-caliber hardware, but we found it more than sufficient for cranking out loud, living room-worthy sound. Same goes for the bundled Altec Lansing VS 4121 three-piece speaker system, though this is where the size of the living room comes into play. The trio can easily fill smaller spaces, but if you're outfitting a large room, you'll want a more powerful speaker system--and probably a surround sound system at that.

Missing from the equation is Wi-Fi, which would help users who don't have a wired Ethernet connection easily accessible behind their entertainment centers. That's one area where the Alienware DHS-2 has the advantage. Also to our considerable dismay, WinBook supplied a wired mouse and keyboard--just not logical for a system clearly designed for couch-based computing. Thankfully, the company plans to switch to wireless components in the near future, though it wouldn't say when or whether the system's price would increase as a result.

Given its relatively low price, we didn't expect much from the PowerSpec LCD, a 30-inch LCD TV/monitor. To WinBook's credit, it's a sharp monitor, a colorful HDTV, and a surprisingly versatile set overall. It features a 15:9 aspect ratio and 1,280x768 native resolution, meaning it can display full 720p HDTV. A pair of nonremovable, 10-watt speakers flank the screen, so you could use the Altec Lansing's satellites as rear speakers (cord length permitting) and enjoy 4.1-channel surround sound.

The WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410 uses Aver Media's single-tuner UltraTV 1500 MCE tuner card. If you want to view HD shows, you'll need to connect a cable or satellite box directly to the TV. The sample HD clips we downloaded to test the PowerSpec LCD looked stellar, and the display also has all the inputs and outputs the first-time home-theater buyer is likely to need. Even standard-def TV looked bright and colorful, though perhaps a touch on the soft side. Our only real complaint with the PowerSpec LCD was its 600:1 contrast ratio and corresponding black-level performance, which we'd classify as mediocre. But at no time while watching our sample movies and TV shows did we ever stop and think, "This doesn't look good." For an entry-level HDTV, the PowerSpec LCD looks great.

Similarly, the MCE 410's average test scores belie its real-world capabilities. The Windows MCE 2005 interface operated quickly and smoothly, and the system didn't so much as hiccup when we recorded a TV show while watching a DVD. The MCE 410 may not be a particularly strong gaming system, but it's plenty robust as a media center.

WinBook provides an average support package for the PowerSpec MCE 410, including a one-year warranty with onsite service and toll-free phone support that's available seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. ET. Unfortunately, at press time we found no MCE 410-specific info on the company's support site. A quick-start setup poster will help you get the system set up to your various A/V components, and Microsoft's Media Center guide will help you learn the in and outs of the OS.

To measure application performance, CNET Labs uses BAPCo's SysMark 2004, an industry-standard benchmark. Using off-the-shelf applications, SysMark measures a desktop's performance using office-productivity applications (such as Microsoft Office and McAfee VirusScan) and Internet-content-creation applications (such as Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver). Depending on the class of the system, we may report only the office-productivity or Internet-content-creation portions of SysMark.

To measure 3D gaming performance, CNET Labs uses Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 2003, widely used as an industry-standard benchmark. We use Unreal to measure a desktop's performance with the DirectX 8.0 (DX8) interface at a 32-bit color depth and at a resolution of 1,024x768 and 1,600x1,200. Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are disabled during our 1,024x768 tests and are set to 4X and 8X, respectively, during our 1,600x1,200 tests. At this color depth and these resolutions, Unreal provides an excellent means of comparing the performance of low-end to high-end graphics subsystems. We report the results of Unreal's Flyby-Antalus test in frames per second (fps).

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:
Alienware DHS-2 Media Center
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.0GHz Intel P4 530; Intel 915P chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X300 (PCIe); Seagate ST3160023AS 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Cyberpower Media Center Ultra Edition
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-55; Via K8T800 Pro chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (AGP); Maxtor 7Y250M0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Polywell MiniBox 939AX
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200+; ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 64MB (shared) integrated ATI Radeon X200; Seagate ST3200822AS 200GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
Sony VAIO VGC-RB38G
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.4GHz Intel P4 550; Intel 915G chipset; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 128MB ATI Radeon X300 (PCIe); Maxtor 7Y250M0 250GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA
WinBook PowerSpec MCE 410
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005; 3.0GHz Intel P4 530; Intel 915G chipset; 512MB DDR SDRAM 400MHz; 64MB ATI Radeon X300 (PCIe); Samsung SP1614C 160GB 7,200rpm Serial ATA