Pinnacle Showcenter Review

["Simon McCaughey" <simonmcc@xxxxxxxxxx>]

A quick review of Showcenter, as promised, I tried to keep it short ,but
there's just soooo much to say!

Background
The idea of the Showcenter is to make media files stored on your PC
available for use on your TV in the living room. I don't have (and can't
get) broadband, so my selection of media is limited to a few ripped DVDs,
loads of MP3's, and about 1000 photos. My basic objective was to remove the
DVD player and VCR from the living room, so I only have a TV, HiFi, TiVo
and Showcenter.

Software Installation
The software installation is smooth, just like any other application, and
then it scans your disk for media. I hit one problem here - because I
mirror my website on my local disk I have all the images stored 3-4 times
on the disk (100%, 50%...etc). The Showcenter picked them all up, and
although it managed to put them into separate albums, this was still a
little annoying. Apart from that all was well. Version 1.?? comes packaged
with the Showcenter, but version 1.5 RC is available for download, so I
immediately did an upgrade. This provides a firmware upgrade for he player
too.

Hardware Installation
If you already have a network set up or understand networking things, this
part would be a breeze. Just plug in, and off you go. In my case however I
have 2 unconfigured Ethernet cards in my PC, so in the end I copied the
Showcenter address, and gave the LAN card a similar address. Then it
worked.

The Showcenter
When you power it on it comes up with a splash screen, then a server
selection screen. This facilitates multiple Showcenter servers on the
network, here you could select which one to connect to. Making a selection
and pressing "ok" then loads the main menu, allowing selection of
music, movies, photos, or settings [see below for screenshots].

So what's it like?
To be honest, after having used TiVo, I think anything is going to be a
disappointment. The remote control is plasticy, badly laid out, clumsy and
unresponsive. The box itself is quite short, and looks really well under my
TiVo, but it has two bright blue LEDs on the front, which can be a little
annoying.

On balance I still think it is an excellent product, although all its
functionality is limited, and there is lots of "would be nice"
things, lets remember that this is only release 1.5, and it has come a long
way since release 1 (about 6 months ago).

It is now possible, and simple to browse our digital photo collection,
listen to MP3's and watch a selection films without all the trauma of
getting off the sofa, and placing a disk in a player:) The unit also
interfaces with a surround sound decoder to give the full experience of the
original DVD, and can playback the AC3 audio from either the ripped VOB, or
from the reduced DivX or XVid file.

Over the weekend I ripped quite a few of the kids DVDs (they have more than
me) and they all play very well on the Showcenter. I just need a capture
card for the PC now to copy the videos onto my disk...

The latest version of the Showcenter software includes support for internet
radio, and also most of Pinnacles range of PCTV cards, which I believe
allows you to watch TV, schedule recordings, etc through the Showcenter. I
have a PCTV Stereo on order, so I'll let you know how that goes.

One more thing
For all us tekkie web nerds, the Showcenter doesn't stop there. Basically
the Showcenter is a web browser. The screens are all generated from php
scripts in a DocRoot directory on the PC, using an http server running on
port 8000. This gives flexibility only limited by your imagination (and
free time). I had a quick play and managed to add a basic weather screen to
one of the sub-menus. There is a sourceforge project called OpenShowCenter
which provides an alternative to the bundled software.

Conclusion
My Showcenter is here to stay. It may be a little rough around the edges,
but I'll give it some time, and hopefully things will straighten out. My
experience is limited by a lack of "other things" - no broadband
means I have no downloaded DivX movies / series, no internet radio, and I
cant surf the web from my box. I have not (yet) got a tuner card for my PC,
so my film collection, which is largely on video, is useless for now.

I like it, and would recommend it to anyone!

There are many other features etc which I have not commented on, please
feel free to ask via email....

For more detail on the Showcenter visit : http://www.pinnaclesys.com/showcenter
For photos of the Showcenter, and screenshots see : http://www.ccso.co.uk/gallery/Showcenter

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