Hi- Grade DMSII 3400: first look review

Hi-Grade seem to have realised that most media centre PCs look like ugly little intruders in the average living room. There’s nothing less homely than a tacky computer spewing wires across the floor. Instead of building another troll, Hi-Grade have put together the DSMII 3400 -- a media centre PC that looks almost exactly like a video recorder.

Crave unpacked the DMSII 3400 this morning and plugged it in. The build quality on the DMS is something special – we’d expect this kind of solid construction from LINN, but Hi-Grade surprised us with a machine that feels like a pro hifi component.

Ten minutes with Windows XP Media Edition was enough to crush our enthusiasm -- Microsoft are never going to be the centre of your digital home while you still have to read 10 page licence agreements and set up user accounts – this is supposed to be a home entertainment system, not a missile launch computer.

Configuring an Internet connection was like negotiating the release of a hostage -- and you can forget using the remote control to do this. We’ve never used a PVR that is anywhere near as unnecessarily complex as Windows Media Edition-based system.

We’ll be taking a closer look at the Hi-Grade this week. Perhaps once everything’s set up we’ll be won over. -CS

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• Tags:
• grade,
• media centre,
• entertainment,
• accounts