August 23rd, 2009
Okoro OMS-BX300 home theater PC delivers high performance, high price
While companies like Dell and Lenovo are trying to enter the home theater PC market at the low end, with unassuming processors and nary a Blu-ray drive to brag about, Okoro is heading in the opposite direction with its new OMS-BX300 “Blu-ray Digital Entertainment System.” Forget an Intel Atom or AMD Athlon CPU—Intel’s high-performance Core i7 920 2.66GHz processor anchors this HTPC, along with 6GB of DDR3 memory. It doesn’t slouch on the other components, either, including a bevy of graphics cards: the ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB for solid gaming and options for multiple HD tuner cards (including CableCard support).
To record video off those cards, the OMS-BX300 includes a pair of 2TB hot-swappable hard drives in RAID Level 1 configuration; it also comes with a 64GB solid state drive, no doubt to speed up boot times. A pair of Blu-ray drives handle recordable media duties, and the Radeon HD 4850’s 7.1 LPCM audio support lets you output surround sound audio via HDMI. Other connections include component-video, S-video and optical audio outputs. Finally, you get the option to get SageTV Media Center 6.5 pre-installed if you’re not a Windows Media Center fan.
Sounds like a dream living-room system—if you can afford it. The OMS-BX300 starts at $3,095, though it’s pretty stacked for that price. Upgrade options include an additional ATI TV Wonder Digital CableCard Tuner ($300), more storage ($250 for 6TB, $550 for 8TB), and some keyboard upgrades. The costliest add-on is a touch pad remote, which tacks on another $800 for well-heeled couch potatoes. For the price, you could buy a handful of nettops, but if you’re looking for your one main PC to hook to your HDTV, the price is a little easier to swallow.
Sean Portnoy spent several years as an editor at Computer Shopper magazine, most recently serving as online executive editor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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