HP z545 Media Center review

Now that I've had my HP z545 Media Center set up and running for almost a week I've had some time to more fully explore more of the features and really get a feel for its capabilities. Overall I'm very impressed with it and quite happy with the purchase, however there are a few small annoyances that could have been fixed quite easily in the design/development process.

Case design:
My initial out of the box impressions were mainly based around the industrial design of the Media Center and it's setup process. Those were both very favorable and I'm still quite impressed by the forethought that was obviously put into the design for the hardware. Little things like the wireless keyboard antenna being included in the case (aside from the 802.11b/g antenna connector there are no external dongles to interfere with the clean lines of the z545) and the fold down covers for the media card slots really help maintain a sleek and professional look to the whole unit. Unlike previous Media Center PC's this is a unit you can feel proud to showcase as the center of your entertainment center, rather than an ugly tower that you want to hide in a closet with a RF receiver dongles snaking out to your entertainment center.

Video configuration:
Getting the DVI/HDMI connection working with my TV was probably the most difficult part of my setup process. Once I connected in via DVI I was getting horrible interlacing problems on screen. I had to experiment around with the advanced settings on the graphics card quite a bit to find a setting that corrected this problem. Unfortunately I could not get 1080i working with the ATI graphics card included in the z545 and my TV, but I was able to make it look fairly decent using the "force 720p display" option and setting my display to a 1280x720 resolution. Using these settings a good 50 pixels are cropped from the edges of my desktop on the TV due to an overscan error. This would be very easy to fix on a windows level by adding some sort of desktop scaling option, but for now I'm stuck with no viable solution. This is unfortunately because the taskbar and start menu are completely cropped and to do any sort of reasonable system administration or hacking I have to RDP into the media center from another machine so that I can view the entire desktop. When using the Media Center 10 foot user interface the controls are all positioned around the center of the interface which makes the cropping problem of almost no impact to the average Media Center user.

Media Center User Interface:
The user interface of Microsoft's Media Center 2005 is really one of the strong points of the entire Media Center product. Microsoft has done a great job of making a user interface that not only works well from the couch using a remote, but has put a lot of thought into making it easy to use with no previous experience. Within a couple of hours of use I had it configured to record the TV programs I care about, and had tweaked all of my Media Center preferences to my liking. I feel that even the most non-technical of users would be comfortable with the system almost immediately.

The most used feature of a DVR (Digital Video Recorder - the technology that allows you to pause live TV) system like a Media Center is the ability to automatically record television programs for you so that you can watch them at your convenience. The interface to specify programs to record is very user friendly, and offers a lot of options on how you want somthing recorded for power users. Unlike competing systems like TiVo and ReplayTV the Media Center offers you a lot of control in assigning priorities to various programs you can help to reduce the number of conflicts that occur on a limited number of tuners. The Media Center offers a fast TV guide for watching live TV - it's really responsive to page up and page down commands, and has a great search feature.

I'm very excited by the amount of data captured by the Media Center about the TV programs that it is recording. Drilling down through the media center UI lets you see a brief description of the recorded program along with information about the original air date and cast. Once you have a number of shows recorded in a particular series you are able to quickly browse through them and select the one you want to watch first quite easily. I think the only improvement that could be made to this area of the Media Centers user interface and functionality would be to have a clear icon or indicator to let the user know if the show details they are viewing are from a rerun, or the first time a program has aired.

Audio:
The z545 really excels when it comes to its audio capabilities. The speaker system I have hooked up at the moment is far from audiophile quality, but I have several excellent sets of headphones (Sennheisers, Etymotics, and Sony's) and I've tried them all out and been impressed. The z545 and clean and crisp sound, with excellent clarity overall. One of the main considerations of a stereo form factor unit like the z545 is the ambient noise that it will produce for the room you are using it in. One of the main problems people have had in the past with using a computer as a stereo component is the noise created by fans inside the case. The z545 is well designed and creates surprisingly little noise - the only time I am able to hear the whine of a fan is when I'm standing behind the unit. It does have a fan on the top of it's case, but it's on a good set of bearings and does not make an excessive amount of noise. The HDD's in the unit are very quiet and I can only hear them when I get right next to the unit, with no audio playing, and heavy hard drive activity. I seriously doubt if the average consumer will even notice any noise, particularly if they are watching a DVD or TV - bravo to HP for a quiet case design and good sound insulation on the HDD.

The Media Center audio interface is well done for the average users library. It's quick and easy to search for tracks and artists, and scrolling through artists and albums is easy. The one flaw with the user interface is that the music library is slow for large libraries. My 120+ gigabyte collection takes about 20 seconds to bring up every time "Music" is selected from the main Media Center menu. It's a great system for the average user, but anyone with a significant music collection will find it difficult to bring up the music they way, particularly if not all of your music files have good ID3 tags.

Remote Control:
The included HP remote control is very smart looking. It is a black that matches with the z545 case, and the green button really pops out. For the most part I've been very pleased with the responsiveness of the remote and the way it fits in my hand. The only real complaint I have about the remote is the lack of programmability - for spending as much money as I did on the z545 I would really like to see a remote that can be programmed to change the volume level on my TV or receiver rather than on the Media Center. I think that's a pretty basic feature request, and most people who are going to spend several thousand dollars on a home theater unit are going to want to run the audio through their receiver - having to have an extra remote is very annoying.

Included applications:
HP has bundled a large number of applications designed for the 10 foot UI with the z545. Among them of course are HP Tunes, HP ImageCenter, and a number of small games and utilities. I have not been that impressed with anything, but I guess that the extra applications are not really a focus for the Media Center market. A couple of the games (developed by Wild Tangent) are fairly neat, but the ergonomics of playing even a puzzle game with a candy bar form factor remote control makes my wrists hurt just thinking about it. Microsoft included a couple of neat apps (like an NPR streaming application to give remote control access to all NPR audio content streamed over the internet) but for most users none of them will be things used on a daily basis. A couple of people have hacked together various utilities (mail readers, RSS clients, and the link) but given that most people who will be buying a Media Center also have a desktop or laptop I think those devices are better suited to most peoples data access needs. A Media Center is so geared in the direction of multimedia and A/V processing with it's UI that trying to throw information access on top of it without significant development efforts seems somewhat futile.

Pros:

• Great A/V integration. The z545 looks like it belongs with other stereo equipment, and has the digital and analog connections to connect into any modern system.
• The z545 offers amazing picture quality for DVD's right out of the box. The progressive scan DVD capabilities combined with effective upscaling for my TV makes for crisp clear pictures.
• The Media Center 2005 rich GUI setup process is very through - they make it easy to set the Media Center up for your audio system, and have a great "video tweaking" tutorial that helps novice users adjust their TV picture to look it's best while using the z545.
• Overall (with the exception of browsing my large music collection) the UI is very fast and responsive. For most of my immediate needs (finding the piece of media that I want and playing it) no more than 4 button presses are necessary from the main menu. Nice little animations and bits of dynamic UI really lend to the high tech feel of the entire product.

Cons:

• System stability could be better - in a day and age when my Windows XP desktops typically get a month or more of uptime, the z545 hangs, crashes, or otherwise has needed to be rebooted at least a couple of times a the week that I've had it.
• The alpha-numeric display on the front is useful but annoying. It scrolls one character at a time and is not configurable. I would at the very least like to see this display have a control panel somewhere so that I could set behaviors (scrolling, data displayed, etc). A far better solution would be to have a grayscale or color LCD panel providing far more UI options to the z545's users.
• I'm a little surprised that HP did not include an HDTV tuner into this unit. I understand that the Media Center 2005 operating system does not yet support Smartcard based HDTV (although it currently supports HDTV via ATSC tuners), but Microsoft has promised to have a software update available sometime in 2005 that will support this, and having to go out and buy an external FireWire HDTV tuner is a bit disappointing.

The final word:
I would highly recommend the HP z545 PC running Microsoft Media Center 2005. I think there are a few areas for improvement, and if HDTV is important to you it might be worth waiting for the next version, but this is the first living room form factor PC that has really pulled the job off well. Bravo HP and Microsoft for making a great hardware/software solution for managing all of my digital media and bringing TV to me on my terms.

Comments

[Collin Cooke]

For your overscan problems, try the latest ATI Retail drivers, Their screen tweek utility has better granularity now to fit your display. I have an ATI X800 on a Sony KF-42 LCD Projection TV. 1080i is NOT native to the Sony so Sony does downscaleing that doesn't look too good. Check with your display's native resolution. 720p is good for most. 1184 x 664 is what works for my setup. I can see the taskbar and the mouse stops on screen on all sides.

[Keith]

Recommended even tho it crashes so frequenty? Hopefully there will be some software updates that will get this under control. I wouldn't like a DVR that hangs at random. Make me miss my shows!

[Mike Smith]

It was my understanding that even the some of the old MCE2004 remotes could control TV power and volume. I'd be very surprised if this remote can't control that. (see p. 7 of this manual http://oem.microsoft.com/static/Worldwide/file/MCE_Remote_Manual.pdf). Can you confirm?

[Peder]

What about noise. Do the fans and the powersupply make a lot of noise? I think this is a very important issue when the computer enters the living room.

[Shawn]

What kind of plasma tv would work good with this type of system? Something cheap :)

[Anthony]

I actually complained today to HP that they do not have the HDTV capabilited already in the unit. I know that the OS cant handle it yet. but that is nothing more than a SP intallation. I stil might buy the system though. I will hook my cable box directly into HD2 via the Component cables, and i will hook the cable box to the computer with prob an svideo cable.. They will both work at the same time. So when i want to watch my HD channels i will have ot just change the video input on the TV. Not a great fix but i dont want to wait any further.

[Jeff]

Good writeup. I saw the Z545 at CompUSA yesterday and went online to search for info. I'd love to see the inside of it... any way you could pop it open and take some pics?

As for HDTV, I don't see it as that big of a problem. The only HDTV tuners available are for over-the-air and they aren't that great. And you probably only get a few network HDTV broadcasts anyway.

[Hey Man]

Hey Man,
I was wondering what the Personal Media Drive looked like? is it some sort of portable firewire/usb drive? was it useful to ya? also could you stream wirelessly video/web etc? say to a laptop?

[Ken]

Thanks for the great write-up. You alleviated my concern about possible excessive fan noise, which is great. My only remaining concerns are integration with a future HDTV-capable display via DVI (my current TV is a non-HDTV plasma w/ a VGA connector), and the non-programmability of the remote. Hopefully those can both be overcome eventually.

To Jeff's question about what the Personal Media Drive looks like, here is a picture: http://hpshopping.speedera.net/www.shopping.hp.com/shopping/images/products/pe503a_400.jpg

One other thing I'm excited about is ripping some of my DVDs and using the "My DVD Collection" program that someone wrote. There may be other programs that do the same thing; I haven't researched them much yet. This one is at http://www.binnerup.dk/mce/mydvdcollection/

[Ken]

Ooh, I just found out about a much better ripped DVD solution than the one I mentioned above: My DVD Collection, available here: http://www.binnerup.dk/mce/

I got my HP z545 a couple of days ago and I am very impressed! Having two tuners is really amazing, especially since I'm coming from a single-tuner Tivo world. The Media Center user experience is just awesome. (Still with some room for improvement, of course!)

Incidentally, I hadn't realized that the z545 already came with one personal media drive, so I had ordered one at the same time I bought the Media Center. I guess I'll probably return it, since it cost $200, though I suppose I could use it for backing up data from my other PCs.

[dave]

Is there a picture of the inside of the unit that you have or in the manual?

The outside looks great, but I am interested in seeing how it is upgradeable.

Can the personal media drive bay be removed and replaced with a different removable drive technology?

Just curious because the only personal media drives available are $200 for a 160GB. I could put in a SATA/IDE removable which would allow for using 300-400 GB drives and be much more cost effective.

Otherwise, is there a way to add in an external SATA interface?

[John]

Typical PC video card scan rates are not aligned with those in consumer TV sets. Without adjustment, the Windows desktop will not usually 'fit' on the TV. Fortunately, you can fix overscan/underscan problems with a free utility called PowerStrip. There's a great how to article here:

www.ramelectronics.net/html/powerstrip.html

It's obvious that HP did not do their homework on one of the most important interfaces in PC/TV media integration. They should have realized that until PC video card makers and TV makers align their designs, most consumers would need a technician to do such a setup. One can actually damage their expensive TV (at worst), or make the image disappear when they are tweaking to remove over/underscan. I don't see this as an issue in practical terms, because it is common for a TV tech to setup a TV delivered to a consumer's home. HP should inform their customers that this is probably a requirement if they consider purchasing a Media Center PC too.

[Gene]

I'm about to buy the 545 and a media extender. I already have a 800.11g network in the house. I read that I can only have 1 wireless extender...is that rue. It's important since I don't have a wired house. Is there a way to have several extenders all wireless.

[Spary]

Gene,

Yes - it's true. A single extender on 802.11g works decently, but occasionaly does not have the bandwidth to transmit video. I ended up running cable through my house to get the best picture quality. I do not think that 802.11g could support 2 video streams with any decent quality at all.

Cheers,

Sparky

[Gene]

Sparky,

Thanks for that info. I went home and saw I actually have .11b router. I think I can connect my Media Center PC with ethernet to my .11b router (for internet access). Then I can have the Media Center PC and the extenders in a peer-to-peer network just for their own purposes. I really need to know if the Media Center OS restricts the topology to 1 wireless exterder. If it's just that the performance is really bad (particularly with video) then I'm probably OK. My extenders will only be receiving audio from my (to be recorded) CD library. The guys at Best Buy couldn't answer whether MS has the restriction built in or if it was just a recommendation.

Gene

[Neal]

I've had a Z545 for about a month and just love it! I can't wait to try the My Videos shareware mentioned above. Hey- has anyone figured out how to hack the front panel display so that I can get it to say "Neal's Home Theater" or something, and to get it to display track information when playing a ripped file, not just a CD? Thanks.

[Gene]

Well after a month of having the Z545 I only had to take it back once for service. The thing just died...of course when I got to Best Buy it worked fine.

One thing I found annoying is that all the front panels fall off. If you keep the unit on, then the heat melts the glue and the panels fall off. All three of them fell off and I kep them on with big paper clips. It wasn't a big enough problem to return the thing but it shows that HP didn't think through the whole design, or at least test it, well.

Gene

--Reply from Sparky--
That's certainly a strange problem. I did not have it occur to mine, but have noticed how hot the case can get. What kind of climate do you live in?

[Isaac]

Anyone every take the z545 apart? I want to upgrade the video card if possible.

thanks
Isaac