14 DAY TRIAL // More and more people tend to opt for complex solutions to built their home entertainment center around, devices that manage to combine enhanced multimedia playback, Internet-browsing and gaming capabilities, this being exactly the case with the latest offering from MVIX USA, namely the HomeHD systems.
The HomeHD concept is marketed by MVIX as the kind of solution you'd want to connect to a HDTV and surround-sound system, packing everything one might need in order to enjoy a complete and comprehensive multimedia experience, combined with access to one's favorite websites and social networking services. Depending on the hardware architecture of choice, the MVIX HomeHD is available in two versions, the S2 and the S4. The S2 is the more “nettopish” of the two, packing an Intel Atom 330 Dual-Core CPU, paired with NVIDIA's 1'st GEN ION graphics platform, up to 4GB DDR2 memory and up to 2TB of storage (although the device is typically shipped with a 250GB HDD unit). The S4 model is a lot more “PC-ish”, featuring an AMD Athlon 4200+ CPU running at 2.2 GHz, 4GB of DD2 memory, a 500GB built-in HDD (up to 4TB supported in this case), as well as an ATI 3200HD GPU. Both systems run Windows 7 with the MediaCenter software on top and sport a slot-loading Blu-ray player, although no info on whether this ODD is Blu-ray 3D compatible or not has been yet provided (we sort of suspect it is, since the they also support HD 3D digital music over HDMI and Optical Digital Audio). Furthermore, as expected, they deliver roughly the same connectivity options, featuring both Ethernet and Wireless-N networking capabilities, HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs, built-in ATSC tuners, built-in memory card readers, as well as 6 x USB 2.0 and one eSata port per system. Sadly, the Mvix HDHome S2 and S4 are pretty expensive, the S2 selling for around 1,000 US dollars, while the S4 goes as high as 1,600 US dollars.