Velocity Micro Media Center PCs Get Vista

By Geoff Duncan
February 02, 2007

Velocity Micro has shipped Vista-enabled version of its CineMagix home theater PCs, featuring Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback and the AMD TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner.

High-end boutique PC maker Velocity Micro has rolled out Vista-enabled version of its CineMagix Grand Theater and CineMagix Pro Cinema home theater PCs.

Both the Grand Theater and the Pro Cinema are both available with the internal AMD TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner, enabling users to watch and recording high-definition digital cable content (although the tuner does vix access to the units' front USB ports). Velocity Micro says the PCs are available with either HD DVD or Blu-ray optical drives, although only Blu-ray currently shows up on the configuration pages, along with a LightScribe-capable dual-layer DVD burner. The units also feature 6 USB 2.0 port (two in front, but see above), two FireWire ports, gigabit Ethernet, storage options ranging from 250 GB to 2.25 TB, 1 to 4 GB of RAM, and Intel Core 2 Duo (in the Grand Theater) or AMD Dual Core Athlons (in the Pro Cinema), The Pro Cinema also sports ATi Radio X19250 Pro graphics with 256 MB of video memory, offering two DVI outputs and one S-Video out; the Grand Theater sports Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS graphics with 256 MB of video memory, offering two DVHI outputs with HDCP capability. Both ship with Windows Vista Home Premium with digital cable support.

The CineMagix home theater PCs should start shipping in early March, with the Grand Theater carrying a base price of $2,195 and the Pro Cinema starting at $1,695…but by the time you get done configuring these to your hearts' desire, you can expect the price tags to be higher.