CW-3000HD Potential HTPC Base System

[wbassett]

This is an interesting looking unit. First, it is setup primarily as a digital satellite receiver, but I spoke to the company and this is a computer running Linux. It has available slots and a cable tuner card can be installed for cable DVR use as well.

It doesn't come with a hard drive, so that's a con, but they are pretty cheap now. I'm not sure if the OS can be changed or not, without a hard drive it's obviously loading from flash. This should be able to accommodate an XBox 360 HD DVD drive or the much more expensive Bluray PC drive that's available, or even both.

I'm not going to say this is the ultimate solution, but it does look like it has some potential and the price isn't that bad. Here are the specs, but you can also check them out on the website.



Hardware:

• Processor: Powerful AMD 3000+ 64Bit Processor
• Memory: 512MB DDRII RAM Expandable to 8GB
• Flash Drive: 1GB Fast System Flash
• Hard Drive: Not Included
• Video: MPEG2 and MPEG4 Acceleration
• Satellite Tuner:
• Input terminal: F-type 75 Ohm
• Receiving frequency: 950~2150 MHz tuning range
• Input level: -65~-25dBm
• Support MCPC and SCPC
• Symbol rate: 2~45 Msps
• FEC Codes: 1/2,2/3,3/4,5/6,7/8 and Auto
• QPSK
• ATSC Tuner:
• Latest LG 5th generation tuner for enhanced reception.
• Supports QAM 64 and QAM 256 Cable signals.
• One TV antenna 75 ohm reception port.
• One S-Video input port.
• One stereo connection jack to sound card for analog TV.
• Video Output: VGA/HDMI or DVI/Component/S-Video
• Audio Ouput: Analog and SPDIF Dolby Digital Audio output
• USB Ports: 4 USB v2.0 ports on back panel and 2 USB v2.0 ports on front panel.
• Media Reader: All In One Media Reader. Supports most popular flash cards.
• Ethernet Port: RJ-45 10/100/1000 Mbits compatible.
• DVDRW: Read/Write DVDs and CDs.

Software:

• Open Source and available for download online
• Linux Operating System - Version 2.6 Kernel
• Powerful X Windows Environment
• Java 1.42 Graphical User Interface
• Software Upgradeable Via Internet and/or USB Storage Device
• Firefox browser with support for popular plugins including Flash.

For those with a dish, this might be something worth looking into as the basis for an HTPC setup. Those with cable, it can handle that as well but there is a little extra work that will need to be done. Still, if you were building an HTPC from scratch you'd need to do that work anyway.

Just something that caught my eye is all, whether it's worth anything is yet to be seen, but with a price of $479 it definitely looks interesting.