HP Media Center M490N Descriptioon

Meet your new digital entertainment center--the HP Pavilion m490n Media Center desktop PC. In addition to offering a central library for your CD library and easy video editing, the m490n can also act as a TV and a personal video recorder (PVR), a la Tivo, as well as an FM tuner. The m490n is powered by the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 operating system (compatible with cable, digital cable, satellite TV, and antenna). It also features a remote control, fast 8x DVD+RW burner, GeForce FX 5200 video card, a ultra-massive 250 GB hard drive, 512 MB of installed RAM, and multi-format memory card reader.

HP Media Center M490N Basics

• Hard Drive: The huge 250 GB Ultra IDE hard drive (7200 RPM) offers more than enough storage for all your documents, digital photos (approximately 250,000 2-megapixel images) and video (approximately 13.5 hours of .avi video), and MP3 collection (up to 3,000 CDs).
• Processor: The top-of-the-line 3.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading technology (which allows a single CPU system to behave in some aspects like a dual-CPU system--see more in Tech Talk section below) is one of the fastest processors currently available on the market. It is well suited for high-performance gaming and professional-quality image, audio, and video editing. It also has a 512 KB L2 cache and 800 MHz front-side buss (FSB).
• Memory: The m490n comes with a 512 MB built-in memory (1 x 512 MB PC-3200 DDR SDRAM)--a decent amount for starters, but you'll want to add more to take full advantage of the capabilities of Windows Media Center. The motherboard has two memory sockets for a maximum memory expansion of 2 GB.
• CD/DVD Drive: The m490n has two DVD drives: a 16x DVD-ROM for playing music, movies, and games and a DVD+RW burner for writing data and video to disc. For DVDs, it has 8x write, 4x rewrite, 12x read speeds; for CDs, it writes at 24x, rewrites at 10x, and reads at 40x. It's compatible with the DVD+RW format, one of two formats for rewriteable DVDs.
• Keyboard & Mouse: It comes with an HP wireless keyboard and wireless optical mouse.

HP Media Center M490N Sound and Graphics

The m490n's video is powered by a 128 MB, 8x AGP GeForce FX 5600 Ultra video/graphics card, which has strong 3-D performance, dual-display capability--supporting one analog (VGA) and one digital (DVI) connection--and TV-out capability (enabling to display the PC on your Television via S-Video).

Sound is delivered via a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 audio card, which delivers high-quality 6.1 channels of digital surround sound (or 5.1 channels of analog-out surround sound). It also supports DVD-Audio, a super-high-fidelity audio format compatible with DVDs. The m490n comes with a three-piece set of Altec Lansing 221 speakers (1 subwoofer and 2 satellites).

HP Media Center M490N Connectivity and Expansion Slots

For expansion, the m490n has two 5.25-inch external bays (both occupied), four 3.5-inch bays (one internal bay available), three PCI slots (two available), and one AGP 8x slot (available). It comes with a built-in floppy drive and the following external connectors:

• 6 USB 2.0 ports (2 in front, 4 in rear) for connecting a wide range of peripherals--from digital cameras to MP3 players
• 2 FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link) ports for connecting digital video camcorders and other peripherals (1 in front, 1 in rear)
• 1 parallel port for connecting older printers and scanners
• 2 PS/2 ports for connecting keyboards and mice
• 1 RGB monitor port
• 1 serial port for older peripherals such as early PDAs
• 1 microphone and 1 headphone jack in the front
• 1 Digital Video Interface (DVI) port
• 1 TV-out (S-Video) port; 1-TV Input S-Video Port; 1-Composite Video/Audio Input Ports;
• 2 audio line-in ports
• 1 audio line-out port
• Multi-format memory card reader that's compatible with CompactFlash (Type I/II), MicroDrive, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro, Smaredia, Secure Digital (SD), and MultiMedia (MMC) memory cards.

It also has an integrated 56K modem (V.92) and an RJ-45 LAN network port (for a 10/100 Ethernet connection to networks and DSL/cable modems).

HP Media Center M490N Preloaded System and Software

The pre-installed Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004 is essentially Windows XP Professional Edition with a variety of tools to help you to create, organize, and enjoy digital media ranging from music to home movies to photo slide shows. Additionally, it enables you to control your television with the included remote and record and pause programs (much like a PVR such as Tivo or ReplayTV). You can even pause or rewind (up to 7 seconds) FM radio broadcasts.

It also features Microsoft Works (for working with word processing and spreadsheet documents), Microsoft Money 2004, Quicken New User Edition 2004, Norton Antivirus 2003 (with 60 days of complimentary updates), Adobe Acrobat Reader, Encarta Encyclopedia 2004 Standard Edition, Adobe Photoshop album (starter edition), RecordNow 6.5 (for burning CDs), WinDVD SE 4.0 (for DVD playback), ArcSoft ShowBiz (for editing digital video), and MusicMatch Jukebox.

What's in the HP Media Center M490N Box

This package contains the HP Pavilion m490n desktop PC, remote control (with USB infrared receiver), Harman Kardon 2.1 speaker system, power cable, keyboard, and mouse. It is backed by a limited warranty for parts and labor for one year from date of purchase.