GADGETS & GIZMOS
HP Device May Be Many Things to Many People
Capitalizing on the popularity of digital audio and video, computer manufacturers are starting to crank out microchip-powered entertainment gear for the living room.
One example is Hewlett-Packard’s new Digital Entertainment Center, which can play and record CDs, store thousands of MP3 files and tune in radio stations and video footage from the Internet.
The de100c is expensive--the “street price” is $999--but it performs the basic functions well and is easy to use.
The CD player sounds crisp and punchy, and it’s unusually quick and reliable when ripping or burning. It takes only eight to 10 minutes to convert a full CD to MP3 files and about the same amount of time to record a CD’s worth of tunes.
Its 40-gigabyte hard drive can store about 9,000 songs using the most common MP3 compression rate, although users probably will choose a higher-fidelity MP3 setting and store fewer songs.
The de100c isn’t ready to assume the role of do-it-all wonder box, however, which is what consumers might expect for the price.
The box doesn’t have a conventional Web browser, so HP is the sole supplier of online audio and video.
HP hasn’t added support yet for music formats other than MP3--the most popular but not the best-sounding type of compression. It can load songs onto only a few of the portable MP3 players on the market. And its playlist functions are rudimentary, making it difficult to create custom mixes of songs.
Those shortcomings all involve the unit’s software, which HP can update automatically through the Net. The main hardware question is why HP didn’t include a drive that could play DVDs.
