That might not seem fair, but I swear: I was in a furniture store the other day and saw an ottoman that looked just like Sony’s new VAIO TP1 HTPC. Which might be on purpose, because this thing certainly won’t fit in any A/V rack that I know of. It’s also not the most well-equipped HTPC on the market, with neither an HD optical drive nor CableCARD capability. It does have a Core 2 Duo running at 1.83GHz, 2GB RAM, Intel 950 integrated graphics (yuck!), 300GB SATA HDD, standard dual-layer DVD, and a TV tuner. So, nothing to write home about, but maybe it’s made of soft leather and will let you take a load off. Pricing is $1,599.99 and up.

Or, of course, that’s just the point: home theatre PCs (HTPCs) aren’t supposed to look like PCs, they’re supposed to look like the typical A/V components. In this respect, at least, Alienware has hit a home run (except for the out-of-place alien head, but what are they supposed to do? That’s their logo!). The specs are a curious choice, from the AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (why no Core 2 Duo?) and relatively low-end nVidia 7600 GS (why no ATI/AMD card with its enhanced AVIVO capabilities?), resulting in lower-than-expected performance results. And, the price is up there: $3,199. There are some other faults, but overall, this looks like a decent HTPC if you just gotta have one NOW.

HTPC-manufacturer Moneual has a slew of sweet and colorful PCs with a $695 base pricetag. Choose from pink, black, white, green, blue or orange cases. [I'll take one of each!] But there is more than just beauty here.

They feature liquid-cooled 64-bit dual-core Athlon 4400+ processors, integrated NVIDIA 6100 graphics, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a vertically-mounted dual-layer DVD burner.

Also listed in the specs is a:
1 x Floopy Port supports up to 2.88MB

Floopy? Is this something new?

Read on for Tech Specs…

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