First impressions of the Alienware DHS2 media centre PC is that its a sturdy device, lifting it out of the box is quite an effort. The choice of a more set-top box style is in keeping with the DHS2's likely home and preferable to a tower design which makes the media centre look too much like a PC. Set-up is simple enough with a myriad of connectivity options, we chose the DVI connection and quickly had the Alienware booting without need to head for the instructions.

The sliver unit has a bright display in the right front corner, this provides informative messages as to the status of the unit and during media replay it can show track names or channel numbers much like we'd expected form a device sitting under the TV. The controls on the front panel are limited unless you open the lower flap to reveal a mimic of the 4 way D pad that is also on the remote control and a whole host of connections allowing USB peripherals to be attached.

The spec reads like a who's who of high end PC kit, for a start there is a 3.0 Ghz Pentium® 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading Technology (you can opt for up to 3.6Ghz) 512mb of Ram (again you can go up to 2Gb) and 160gb hard disk which can go up to a whopping 400gb! Plus you get GeForce™ 6600LE graphics and the twin TV tuners that make a media PC do its stuff.

After what is a typical PC boot up sequence the last action is for windows MCE (media centre edition) to run up, this opens a simplified GUI which is more suited to navigation via the provided remote control. This is where we started to struggle a little, the on screen menus and wizards did not seem to configure all manner of attributes that we needed to change. For a start the resolution was incorrect and the only way to set this is to shutdown or minimise the MCE and go back to windows XP which is running under the hood, this made us realise why we needed a keyboard and mouse (again included in the Alienware bundle). Setting this up did need the manual and while it all works well it has a rather unsightly outboard RF receiver for the mouse and keyboard that connects via USB to the DHS2. Its a shame that the keyboard and mouse aren't better integrated to the DHS series machines, perhaps a Bluetooth connection and inbuilt BT card would have been a neater implementation than the RF systems and its external box and cables.

Now we had control but we had a sleek (if large) Alienware Media Centre with an ugly RF receiver on top, however we could quickly set the correct resolution and joined the DHS2 with the office WiFi network, this was painless and soon allowed the Alien unit to see our music and video server.

The MCE GUI is clean and simple and we were soon navigating via the remote and finding albums via thumbnails on our TV screen, while this is impressive we've seen it on numerous WiFi media streamers under £150 so why spend all this extra on a Media Centre DHS2?

The answer is video, the Alienware came equipped with dual TV tuners allowing both recording and watching of live broadcasts, add this to the 160gb hard disk and there is plenty of room to make recordings and turn the unit into a PVR. The DHS2 can record for a number of Video inputs ranging from RF TV or FM signals to S Video / Composite so it should be able to take the output of a traditional TV aerial or as we tested a set-top box. You do get full control over external Set-Top boxes like  Sky units or Freeview tuners via the supplied IR blaster, this enables the Media Centre to switch channels on the set-top box via IR as if it was the remote control of the unit.

We had quite a struggle to get the TV tuners working with an RF signal and needed to use Alienwares technical support (which was very good) they advised on a de install of the TV Tuners (both of them) and a re install, this seemed to bring the record capability to life and Windows MCE could now access them. This enabled us to schedule some recordings using downloaded EPG data in a style not dissimilar to Sky+ but to be fair not as easy to use or as intuitive. Soon we had a few recording including an episode of Top Gear to view and set about testing the video playback of the Alienware unit, using a large 26" LCD screen the images seemed comparable with the original Freeview unit output and played smoothly without interruption.

In fact the video playback is very convincing and using a few previously ripped DVD files on our server we happily watched a movie while surfing the web, the only slight annoyance was a weird vibration from the DHS 2 which didn't like our HiFi stand. Overall the DHS 2 is very quite in operation with only slight fan noise but the vibration could only be stopped by padding under the feet of the unit to stop the resonating sound rattling the HiFi stand itself.

Over the course of a two weeks we started to use the Alienware DHS 2 as a central media system watching both TV and listening to pod casts, web radio and streamed music. During all this time the DHS2 was highly reliable and sat quietly glowing from under the TV connected to the wireless LAN. Operating 90% of the time via the remote control Windows Media centre edition proves to be an OK user experience, its a bit slow between menus and a bit basic for anyone skilled in driving windows XP but it does handle media well.

It could be argued that the Alienware DHS2 is over specified for the task and that a lesser machine could be used, indeed this is what many of the competitors do, but given the smooth performance of the DHS machine we'd stick with an over the top build to ensure that Windows MCE has enough power to run. We like the Alien Ware design despite its weight and bulk, its more in keeping with the living room than a tower PC or Mac Mini styled device. In summary this is a very competent media centre PC and our gripes really relate to the Media Centre Edition from windows and its ease of use / configuration, if a media centre is to find its way under the majority of UK TV sets then Microsoft have work to do, however Alien Ware are ready to roll.

Published - 22/02/2006

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