HP z556 Digital Entertainment Center All-in-one source for TV and HDTV, movies, music and photos

HP z556 Digital Entertainment Center All-in-one source for TV and HDTV, movies, music and photos
Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
Product Type: Personal Computer

Editorial Review:
Product Description
Never miss another episode of your favorite TV show! It's easy with the z556 Digital Entertainment Center. And TV is just the beginning.

Average customer rating:

could be pretty good, when everything is working
Slick Looking - Components are older technology - Keyboard sucks!

HP z556 Digital Entertainment Center All-in-one source for TV and HDTV, movies, music and photos

Manufacturer: Hewlett Packard
ProductGroup: Personal Computer
Binding: Personal Computers

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Product Description

Never miss another episode of your favorite TV show! It's easy with the z556 Digital Entertainment Center. And TV is just the beginning.

Customer Reviews:

could be pretty good, when everything is working.......2006-07-22

I just got this machine for a few days... and the first day, it already froze on me. so far, it froze a few times already. one time i needed to reboot, while the other times, after coming back a few hours later, i could see that it is running again.

the good thing about this system is that you can record HDTV, as well as SDTV, even with dual tuner SDTV. And in fact, you can record all 3 channels (1 HD and 2 SD all at the same time), but that probably will work the machine too hard.

The other thing is, the recorded HDTV cannot be played on any of my other computers. The SDTV could, but in order to make them into a DVD playable in any set top DVD player, you need to make it into a "video DVD", and it can take an hour or two (i usually leave the room and come back a few hours later). However, during this conversion process, the hard drive works very hard, as it needs to read a lot of data in the SDTV format and encode the data into the DVD format. it was almost like a stress test for the hard drive, and i don't know how long the hard drive can last if i do the conversion regularly.

another good thing is that it will search and show all the movies playing right now, and all the movies that will be shown next, on all the channels, and the movies are shown with a DVD box image, so it is very easy to browse and decide which movie you like to watch.

the first time i tried the recording, i tried to record some educational program from a local PBS station. and all the programs have the first 30 seconds missing. So it seems like the clock sychronization is not done so well. So I tried to adjust the clock in the Media Center settings. However, there was no such thing. I had to minimize everything and then look at the really tiny control panel and get the "Date and Time", and look at the tiny characters, and set the clock 30 seconds ahead of the official time from my cell phone, which gets the atomic clock time regularly.

I'd say the most important issue is that the machine will freeze, letting you wait a few minutes or 20, 30 minutes before you can watch live tv again, watch recorded programs, or set any program recording, etc. this is a very big issue for me for the machine.

maybe the freezing is due to the CPU not being to handle the recording and at the same time respond to the user's command. the higher end model is z558 and it has a dual core CPU and it may handle the issue better.

There was also one time when i watch live HDTV, the image would play for a half second, and stop for a half second, and this pattern went on for a couple of minutes, before i decided to give up on watching the program.

in all, it is hard to think of spending about 1500 bucks and get a machine that works partially. there are alternatives such as a sony HDTV recorder at about 799 bucks which sony has stopped making at this moment, and the sony XL1 and XL2 system. the simplest solution might be just to get one or two DVD recorders which is 120 bucks each, and record your programs onto DVD. that way, it doesn't have the freeze up problem, and your DVD will be playable in most set top DVD player.

Slick Looking - Components are older technology - Keyboard sucks!.......2005-12-25

Picked one of these up the other day, mostly for the slick design and for the wireless keyboard with trackball type mouse controller. But that's all it has, is looks...

After using the keyboard, it quickly became tedious to use, since not only are the keys hard to push down, they are in a tight proximity of each other and not in the usual places, and the wireless is hit and miss, possibly because it runs at only 49MHz frequency. It will miss keys here and there, so you have to type very slooow, and check your work very often, and with passwords where you can't see what you are typing, good luck! It quickly becomes a tire... There is no number pad and the trackball mouse is skippy and lacks a scroll feature...

The processor is 1 "generation" older than the current dual core intel processors and the RAM is standard DDR instead of DDR2... Come on, the dual core Pentium D has been out for more than 6 months, what is taking HP? Is it because P4 is inscribed on the casing and they don't want to reinscribe the case?

Unless HP updates the components and the keyboard, this is a terrible value and a POS.

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