In the last post we looked at the Sony Vaio TP2 Home Theatre PC a very stylish Media PC that would always look good in the living room. However there are a number of alternatives which may offer a better alternative in terms of system features that while perhaps not quite so stylish as the Sony, still have a set top box look that would fit right in beside the living room TV.

A very good example of this type of media PC is the Acer Aspire iDea 510 Home Theatre PC which sports a DVD player like look, but is able to give all the benefits of a normal PC . One important thing is that this device with the exception of the disk storage has been built using laptop technology rather than standard desktop components, this is means that it is very quiet which is an important factor when looking for a media PC. You don’t want to be turning up the volume just so you can hear the TV over the PC fans!

Like the Sony this device provides 500GB of storage, 1 GB of Ram and a Duel Core processor but it also provides dual TV - tuners allowing you to record two channels at once or record one channel while watching another. One other feature of this device is the vast array of input and output options meaning you would have little difficultly in connecting up to any input or output device. If there was one thing that was missing it would be probably be the lack of a Blu-Ray disc drive but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that in newer devices soon.

All in all a nice complete package that because of the PC capabilities will give you additional value than you would get with something like a Sky +, like the ability to manage music and photos, act as a DVD player & recorder etc. The included wireless keyboard would also allow you to browse the Internet etc.

There also seems to be some good deals around on this particular device at the moment.

Are you looking for a media PC?