2partsfusion DMS-701 Media Server HTPC Review

2partsfusion DMS-701 Introduction

I received an email on 2/1/06 saying that construction on the review unit was commencing and another on 2/16/06 saying that it had shipped. It arrived on 2/20/06. When they asked, my only requirement was for wireless networking capability. According to 2partsfusion, the system was pre-configured with the standard build components and included the new HDA X-plosion card 7.1 with DTS connect and Dolby Digital Live, as well as a wireless card, but eliminated the HDTV card as there were only so many available PCI slots on the motherboard for my unit. Other motherboards offered by 2partsfusion have more slots. Mine was configured such because of the passive cooling capability of the unit.

The box that showed up at my doorstep was much larger than I had expected, though it was light for its size. Once I got it open, I quickly saw why - a sea of pink packing peanuts. Luckily my son was asleep and didn't have a chance to get into them before I hid the box away. Still, I was finding them in the oddest places for days afterward.

2partsfusion DMS-701 Media Server Build Quality and Fit and Finish

Fishing the unit out of the box, I was at first a little disappointed. It was the shape and size of a desktop computer tipped on its side. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised; it is a Home Theater PC after all. Once I unwrapped it from the protective layer of bubble wrap and got a better look at it, I felt a little better about the aesthetics. The case was a black brushed aluminum and felt sturdy. While it is large, it is no bigger than my receiver (though the Denon AVR-3805 is quite big) meaning that if you have room for your receiver, you probably won't have to buy another piece of furniture for this thing.

The "power" button has a blue halo around it and a small LCD screen to the right. The blue halo is very bright and has no dimmer. The DVD tray is just as flimsy and breakable as any you'd find on a computer (meaning very). Four chromed round feet add just the touch of elegance it needed. Once it was set on the rack, it looked a lot less like a tipped over computer and much more like a piece of audio equipment. The edges are a little sharp and the entire thing could use an angle other than 90 degrees somewhere, in my opinion. The top removes with five small screws and doesn't fit as seamlessly as I'd like but is good for access if you ever need to add/remove hardware. Given the upgradeable nature of such a device, this is a concession I'm willing to make. My suggestion; put it on the bottom shelf of your rack and it'll disappear.

2partsfusion DMS-701 Media Server Setup and Interface

Apparently I missed a few emails from 2partsfusion because I never got the setup manual. Well, it is not so much a manual as a guide. Frankly, it is surprisingly short and useful. Oh, yes, useful. Anyone fairly familiar with a piece of audio equipment and some computer knowledge can figure out how to hook the thing up without the manual (I did), but there are enough full color pictures and easy to follow instructions that it makes me angry to read some of the stuff that comes from Denon, Yamaha, Pioneer, et al. Really, this is a good example of how to put together a guide: color picture of what you are talking about, labels on everything, and text using small words telling you where everything goes. Simple, easy, useful. It was also basic. This guide will get you up and running but will do little to troubleshoot problems.

Now, you do have to remember that this is a computer. I kept forgetting that and would wonder why something wouldn't work after I hooked it up. Case in point - I connected the unit to the display but couldn't get a picture. Struggled and struggled with it until I finally decided to restart it. Suddenly, I got a picture and remembered; unless it is USB, you need to restart each time you add something. Part of this has to do with a paradigm shift on my part - when I add a piece of equipment to my rack, I expect it to act like a set-top box and not a computer.

Unless you had the foresight to install an Ethernet run to your home theater (I didn't), I'd seriously suggest considering the wireless adapter. I had problems with mine (to be described later) but the convenience is unparalleled. The best and worst thing that ever happened to me was getting a wireless router. Suddenly I was free to surf the Internet anywhere in and around the house... which meant I was free to work anywhere in and around the house. But in this case, the wireless adapter and my less than state of the art router worked together without a hitch.

I found the DMS-701 to run silently in my room. The unit sits no more than six feet away from me as I type and it's been on for days and I can't hear a thing. This is definitely a media server that you can place in a room and not have to worry about annoying or distracting fans. I connected the unit to my Denon AVR-3805 via TOSLink and both s-video and component video connections.

MCE (Windows Media Center Edition) Interface

Unlike the programmer with the sense of humor (and probably looking for a new job right now ) that programmed this message to appear on the LCD screen when you plug the unit in and turn it on, I found the MCE interface to work quite nicely. Now, I'm not a programmer, so perhaps there are issues with Windows MCE that rise the ire to the point where such a message is deserved or at least justified. I don't know. I do know that the interface is well thought out and worked fairly intuitively for me. One thing I really appreciated was the interconnectivity of it. You didn't have to back all the way out of wherever you were to get to the settings page, you could mostly get to the settings you needed from where you were. 

The MCE main menu was well laid out and easy to navigate. Some of the options (music, radio) would show you your most recently used ones to the right so that you could directly access them if you wanted. It is a nice option that cuts three or four button presses out of the process. I especially found it useful for music as my favorite albums were always on the top.

For the most part MCE would display a box in the lower left-hand corner of the screen showing the latest thing you were watching/listening as you navigated the menus. As long as you didn't go too deep into a menu item (connecting to the Internet or updating the guide, stuff like that) you could arrow over to the box and select it, expanding it to full screen. The box is painfully small so that you 舗 ll need a fairly large screen to really get much practical use out of it (actually see what is going on) but it is a nice feature.

One thing I didn't like was the volume control. Volume control? Why would I need that on this box? In what Bizarro World would I need such a feature? I can't think of a single use for it other than giving my child something to turn all the way down so I think there is something wrong with my receiver. Which he did - more than once. Punk.

The last thing that bugged me was scrolling. On many screens, you couldn't scroll up to get to the bottom of a list (i.e. the list didn't wrap around). When I have 20 programs saved and I want to watch the last one on the list, I find it tedious to have to scroll down 19 when I should be able to scroll up one. Also, make sure you have your keyboard and/or mouse handy whenever you come across an agreement disclosure. When I first started up the machine, I had to scroll though 50+ pages with the remote before it would let me "agree." With the mouse, you can just click "agree" and skip all that scrolling.

Setup and Performance - Movies

Now, I'm sure that this box can be used very successfully to burn and store movies. Honestly, until the courts decide whether or not you have the right to do that, I'm not going to tell you how. Suffice it to say that through the MCE interface, you can save movies to the hard drive but you can't add them to your movie database (and view them) if they are copyrighted. I guess this limits you to home movies burned on DVDs. I took the oldest DVD I have (DOA - the original) and tried to add it to my database but no luck.

Movie playback is mostly a snap through the DVD drive. When you load the movie, it will ask you if you want to play it no matter what you are viewing at the time. If you indicate "no" then you can always go back and play it later from the main menu or by hitting the DVD Menu button on the remote. That's mostly always and not always always go back, as it seemed that on a few occasions it would forget that I had a movie in the drive. Generally, I'd be listening to one of my DTS music DVDs (Porcupine Tree as often as not) the night before and the next morning, I'd want to start it again. Even manually opening and closing the drive would make no difference, I'd have to either switch movies or restart the unit. Though, if I restarted the unit with the movie in the drive it wouldn't load completely until I removed the DVD. Hey, I don't pretend to understand it, I just call them like I see them.

The one exception to my "it's OK to have the unit in the room with you" statement is during DVD playback. I could definitely hear the disc spinning from my preferred sitting position. It wasn't so loud that it was constantly distracting but I could hear it during the quieter moments of a movie.

Netflix is a wonderful and terrible thing: Wonderful in its convenience, terrible in how easy it is to put a dud on your list and forget to remove it. Enter Saw II . While I'm sure there are people out there that loved this craptacular movie, I'm not one of them. Predictable, unoriginal, and basically inferior to what I considered to be a mildly inventive first movie. I wasn't a huge fan of Se7en either but Saw (the original) was clearly an attempt to take Se7en and make it more gory (gorier?). Saw II is an obvious attempt to cash in on the original's success (due, in my opinion, in no small part to an advantageous release date). I will say that the DMS-701 proved more than capable as a DVD player, sending through a clear video feed and convincing DTS audio. Regardless of how I felt about the movie, I found the experience immersive and convincing without a hint of processing artifact.

I tested burning a DVD-R using the supplied drive and the MCE interface. I have to admit that in anticipation of them asking for the unit back, I decided to try and save the episodes of 24 that we had recorded and never gotten around to watching.

At first, I tried to do it myself and got the episodes on the DVD but wasn't able to play it on a standard DVD player (worked on the computer though). Eventually, I broke down and went to the 2partsfusion forums and found the answer in a few clicks.

2partsfusion DMS-701 Setup and Performance

Copying music to the hard drive is as easy as pressing a button. The burning process allows you to do other things (listen to music, watch TV, whatever) and gives you a message when the burning is complete. The DMS-701 connects to the Internet and downloads the cover art and song list. In fact, when the burning process begins, it suggests the name of the band and album and asks for confirmation. It also allows you to connect to different databases on the Internet so that if the album is some sort of obscure import, you have a better chance of finding it. The unit comes standard with 280 MB of storage but can be upgraded to 2 terabytes (oh yeah, I said tera bytes).

If for any reason you can't find the album, resist the urge to allow it to be titled "Unknown" under the assumption that you'll name it later. If you do that more than once, the computer doesn't know that each "Unknown" is different and will place them all under the same heading. At that point, it is easiest just to erase it and start over.

Within the MCE interface, I could find no way of delineating a playlist (picking a bunch of songs you like and saving them) though there are a number of preset playlists which I found to be completely uninteresting. What you can do easily is set up a queue. What I would do is pick a number of albums that I had on the hard drive and select "Add to Queue" and "Repeat." You can also add individual songs but I was too lazy to do that. If you like a particular song, you can select it and hit "Buy Music." This allows you to search for additional versions, remixes, and other songs by the same band and download them.

Any of us that have used Windows Media Player is familiar with visualizations. Personally, ever since the days of the 3DO I've been a sucker for such novelties. Once I realized that you could enable visualizations either manually or change the settings so that when you started a song/album, it automatically initialized, I immediately chose the latter. My in-laws came to visit for a couple of days and were noticeably impressed. I know, it is a fairly mundane ability but it is just such things that impress the uninitiated. Plus it kept my two and a half year old transfixed. Sort of "baby hypnosis" if you will. Anytime I needed 5 minutes of quiet, I'd start some music and know that it would hold his interest. The best parenting technique...? Probably not. But sometimes five minutes is all you need to regain your sanity. I later realized that allowing visualizations to automatically start makes it impossible to get to the menu that lets you select the "repeat" and other options.

The only really strange thing I came across with music is that on the selection screen, some information would say "Unknown" but would then mystically appear once you hit play. Case in point, the Death Cab for Cutie album I reviewed recently, Transatlanticism , would be without the artist's name on the selection screen but it would show up on the track information on the screen and on the little blue LCD on the unit. I asked 2partsfusion about this and they were as confused as I was. This also showed up on an Interpol album I loaded.

Manufacturer's Note: 2partsfusion does offer for the audiophile custom DMS systems with more advanced audio functionality featuring higher-end audio cards from M-Audio and SoundBlaster as well as specialized software installations using JRivers Media Center or Charmed Quark Systems.

The Death Cab for Cutie CD is a hybrid SACD/CD. As I noted in my review, the differences between the two versions were undistinguishable to my ear. Sadly, with my review unit, it could not pass DVD-A or SACD information. I tried to burn a DTS CD to the hard drive (Diana Krall - Love Scenes ) but the unit wouldn't even play it - nothing but static. I think it is because it is a CD with a DTS track. It had no problems with the DTS DVDs like the Blue Man Group - The Complex . One word of caution, I found myself tempted to use the remote as if I were listening to music when listening to a DTS DVD. Not a good idea. With Porcupine Tree - Deadwing , I found that the "skip" button would do strange things (like freezing the computer). I had to remember to use the scroll buttons (as the menu on each screen indicates).

The Death Cab for Cutie, Marillion - This Strange Engine , and Barenaked Ladies - Gordon , along with a number of others were all burned successfully and playback was flawless. It is a really nice convenience to have all your music at your fingertips. Once the unit is networked, you can transfer all of your content from your computer to the DMS-701 as easily as dragging and dropping. You'll probably want to make sure that your music is fairly well organized when you do so or you'll have to do a lot of reorganizing on the DMS-701 (album (Title, Artist and Genre) and track (Title, Artist, and Rating out of 5) information can be edited).

Setup and Performance - TV

Ahhhhh... recording TV. For those of you who have never experienced this before, take my word for it, don't. Because once you do, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. And giving it up is like going cold turkey after a '2 pack a day for 20 years' smoking habit. My unit came configured with two standard definition tuners allowing me to record one station and watch another or record two at once (having to watch one or the other while doing that). My last DVR was an early model from Dish Network which only had one tuner. This is a luxury that I don't know how I'm going to do without once I have to return the unit. Recording TV was as easy as selecting a channel and pressing "Record" or scrolling through the guide until you found a show you wanted to watch and hitting either "Enter" or "Record". Personally, I scanned the Disney channel once a week for a movie and recorded it for movie night with my son (usually Saturdays). I also kept a couple of episodes of Bob the Builder, Thomas the Train, and Clifford on hand for his grumpier moments. We were going to the library once a week to check out DVDs for him but this is so much easier.

Of course, you can pause and rewind live TV. The unit starts "recording" from the moment you start viewing the channel with a max of 30 minutes in its "short term" memory. I would have liked at least an hour as the default. One thing I would have liked to have seen that my Dish unit also lacked is the ability to rewind and record from that point. If you are watching a show and decide you 舗 d liked to have recorded it, you can't rewind to the beginning and start recording from there. If you pressed "Rewind" and hit "Record", it starts recording from wherever the show is playing in real time. You can hit the "Info" button and ask the unit to find other instances of the show and ask it to record that one, but I don't know why, if the show is already in memory, you can't just save it from wherever you want.

When setting up the TV, the area you live and the type of provider you have will be required. I have Comcast and the guide downloaded in a couple of minutes. It would occasionally refresh (though I rarely noticed when that happened) and for the most part it was accurate. Cartoon Network was a notable exception as their late night "Adult Swim" programming was often wrong. As I'm a huge Aqua Team Hunger Force fan, I found this particularly irksome as ATHF was often mislabeled as "Home Movies," a show that sucks. Well, it's OK but not nearly as good. The fast forward button skips 3 hours at a time and the scene advance skips 12 - both very useful options. If you were looking at the guide on my Dish DVR when the big hand hit either the 12 or the 6, the guide would bring you back to the current channel and timeframe. That used to irritate me to no end. The DMS-701 just updates the guide without moving you from the channel/time you are viewing. Very nice. One thing to remember is that the guide is normally only available from a digital network. The convenience of being able to see what you are watching and what is coming up with a button push can't be underestimated. Once you have enjoyed a feature like this, sitting there watching the TV Guide channel feels like a root canal.

Watching a recorded show is as easy as picking it from a list and hitting play. Once you stop playback, it will give you a number of storage options including "Keep until space needed", "Keep for a week", "Keep until I watch", and "Keep until I delete". Personally, I like the "watch" and "delete" options. Some of this stuff I'm just recording because I won't be home but I'm not wanting to keep it on the hard drive forever. The kids stuff, that stays - until I get sick of watching it and I'll delete it manually. The unit defaults to "Keep until space needed" which is my least favorite option.

The recorded TV list is organized in reverse chronological order (newest on top) with the opening screen being the last three or so recorded and the scheduled recordings. A maximum of seven programs are shown on the screen displaying the show's name and the date recorded. Personally, I would rather have the oldest recorded on top as I tend to scroll down and the fist incidence of a show I watch. I once watched a two part Scrubs in reverse order because of the organization of this screen. If you change the view to "Sort by Title", it lists them from the first to the last.

While the 2partsfusion DMS-701 has the ability to send out a DVI signal, it is a "garbage in, garbage out" situation. If you are watching standard definition TV on a less than optimal signal (like mine) the output will reflect that. I will say that I noticed increased graininess and some ghosting that wasn't apparent on my normal connection.

Setup and Performance - Radio

The DMS-701 has a standard over the air (OTA) tuner for FM radio that works well. You can program your favorite stations in manually or scroll through the channels in .2 increments. I didn't find a "seek" option where it scrolls automatically to the next strong signal - a glaring omission in the program. Well, actually there is a "seek" button but it just seeks up on increment each time. I was pleasantly surprised that you could rewind and record radio, I wasn't expecting that.

One of the things you can select in the "Internet Spotlight" is a couple of different Internet radio providers (at the time of the review, Musicmatch and Live365.com). Both these providers have free and premium areas, the latter you have to pay for. With all the free Internet radio out there, a way of integrating free stations would have been nice. Conversations with 2partsfusion revealed that this is by design within the MCE interface (see Setup and Performance - Other below) and that you can get those stations by exiting the interface and using a separate program. This would most likely require the user to grab the keyboard or have some serious macros programmed.

Setup and Performance - Gaming

I'm not going to lie to you; I really like my DTS. That is why I was so excited about the inclusion of the HDA X-plosion card. Passing though movies really isn't that big of a deal but upmixing games are. With the new job, another kid on the way, and general life issues I've been out of gaming for a while. The last single person game I bought was Diablo 2 and I was into City of Heroes for a while before we moved into our new house (a little over a year ago). Still, I felt obligated to test the gaming potential of the unit in general and the HDA card specifically.

Now, I must say that conversations with 2partsfusion revealed that they don't suggest doing this. The DMS-701 is really meant to be used as a HTPC - meaning music/movie storage, organization, and playback. Once you start installing games and doing your taxes and adding more and more programs - well, you are going to slow the machine down. But it is a PC and people are going to install games on it so I downloaded the Doom 3 demo. While I generally like the provided wireless keyboard for basic interface, the little mouse/joystick thing in the top corner is completely inadequate for circle strafing - even if it had worked for the game, which it didn't (actually, the joystick worked but the keyboard didn't). You'll have to either get a long cord for a PS/2 mouse and keyboard or a wireless one that works for this sort of game. I had neither so I was relegated to sitting near the unit while playing.

Let me say this, if you've never experienced gaming in you home theater with a real subwoofer providing the low end, you've never experienced it. My previous gaming experiences pale in comparison. Now, I did find the game to be quite sibilant on the top end but the bottom was simply amazing. The little bit I played for this review had me absolutely Quaking in my boots (pun intended) as I remembered what it felt like to be scared by a game. It was also really nice to have the sounds of the zombies/monsters clue you in to where they were. That is the sort of gaming experience that immerses you rather than involves you. I don't think it had the creep factor that would hold through the entire game like the Resident Evil games are so known for but at first blush, I was pretty impressed.

2partsfusion DMS-701 Remotes, Issues, and Conclusion

The MCE interface had a number of other abilities that I played around with. When you hit the "Info" button, it gives you the option of initiating Instant Messenger. This can be disconcerting as you'll get messages in the lower left of the screen while you are watching TV. It can be as fun for you as it is distracting for everyone else. The box is small and it only shows a couple of lines of text but it does manage to remain legible while minimizing the screen real estate.

The Internet Spotlight has been mentioned in reference to Internet radio though there were a number of other options available (MTV, Fox Sports, Comedy Central, XM Radio, Game xStream, Movielink, GalleyPlayer, and more). I toyed around with it for a while and found some interesting content but it was far too limited in my opinion. Apparently, the Internet Spotlight is set by Microsoft from providers that request (i.e. pay ) to be included. That means no customization on the user's end. It ended up being more of a "commercial" area allowing limited access or free trials with subsequent pleas for a subscription. More often than not, I just used it to test to see if the wireless network was working.

The front of the unit has an 11-in-1 internal card reader - Supporting CompactFlash I/II, MicroDrive, Secure Digital Card/Multimedia Card and more. While I didn't really take advantage of it, it is something that a user could use to download pictures into the "My Pictures" folder. The way I would use it, I'd go through my pictures and pick my favorites. I'd either transfer them to the DMS-701 over the network or download them to the card on the camera. I'd then transfer them from the card to the unit via the front ports. Lastly, I'd set those pics as a slide show for the screensaver. Nothing impresses grandparents more than seeing pictures of their grandkids scrolling across the screen. I've got this set up on my desktop and I've often found my parent or in-laws transfixed by the screensaver. Sort of a "grandparent hypnosis" if you will.

The MCE interface has a simplistic version of the video and audio calibration akin to the THX optimizer on many DVDs these days. A movie explaining how it works is not only provided but required in order to make use of the calibration. My take, if you spent $3k on an HTPC and God knows how much on a display, you've probably already done this. If you haven't, or more likely, some well meaning relative "helped" you turn everyone into orange-faced Oompa Loompa's, you could use this feature for a short term fix before getting an ISF calibration.

2partsfusion has a fairly active forum community that is used by users to get answers and staff to disseminate fixes/information. Chances are, if you have a problem, someone else does as well. Customer service from 2partsfusion is like a marriage - a lifetime commitment. Once you buy a machine, you are welcomed and encouraged to seek assistance with everything from problems to upgrades. Your keyboard acting funny? Give them a call. You want to install a new sound card? They'll walk you through it. No six months free then $24 dollars per incident nonsense. They stand behind their product and that is one of the biggest draws of the company.

As much as I've commented on how the DMS-701 acts more like a computer than a set-top box, it is just that fact that makes the unit nearly infinitely upgradeable. Whereas many of the competitors may have more stable interfaces and less conflicting software issues, they also require that you buy a whole new unit. The HTPC model allows you to take advantage of new technologies as they arrive. Of course, you pay for this in ease of use but that is always the case - the more flexible something is, the harder it is to use.

Remotes

The unit came with two remotes, the Microsoft wireless keyboard and the Microsoft Remote Control for Windows XP MCE 2005. For the most part, I liked the keyboard a lot. The keys on the side were fairly well laid out and easily accessible. The keys on the keyboard didn't light up (though that probably would have killed the battery faster than anything), and the symbols on the buttons were a bit obscure - but I didn't really have a problem with that. I learned the three or four I used on a regular basis in a matter of moments and rarely ever looked down. My only real qualm with the keyboard is that the backlight had two real settings; off and millisecond (actually, about 2 seconds by my unscientific count). The few times I realized I had pressed the wrong button, I NEVER looked down fast enough to catch it with the light on. It was that fast (or I'm that slow). The joystick was completely unfit for long term duty and was painful to use (both physically and emotionally) after only a few minutes. If you plan on spending any time at all using the mouse, get a different keyboard with a traditional mouse. My wife absolutely refused to use the keyboard so it mostly gathered dust on my shelf.

Now, the Microsoft remote was spectacular in its ability to suck. I HATED this remote with such a passion that it made my eyes bleed. It was slow to respond, had a number of odd behaviors that were probably driver-related, and was laid out as if someone was playing a bad joke. The keypad was all the way at the bottom forcing you to balance the remote on your leg or risk dropping it. All the audio controls (play, stop pause, etc.) were at the top. The middle had the directional keys, the channel and volume buttons, four quick keys, and the ubiquitous Windows key which would bring you to the main MCE menu even if you are on the desktop. The problems: backlighting and the mute button. The keypad is not lit up - at all. The four most useful buttons to send you (in order from left to right) to Recorded TV, the Guide (listing of what is on TV), Live TV, and DVD Menu are not lit, though, if they were, the text is on the plastic so it would do you no good. Personally, I would have liked a hotkey for "music" (and would have readily switched out the DVD Menu button for this).

The more glaring problem, in my mind, was simply the key layout. If I relax the remote in my hand, the mute button lands squarely under my thumb. I think they were shooting for the Windows key but in my hand it was the mute button, which is directly below the windows key. There are a number of ways that this layout could have been improved, most noticeably by moving the directional keys to the center (with the OK button landing under the relaxed thumb) and the keypad moved up slightly or the overall length of the remote increased so that you could actually use the buttons. My biggest suggestion, upgrade to one of the other remotes offered by 2partsfusion (the Logitech Harmony 880 or 890). Clint reviewed the 880 and gave it high marks.

I should note that for IR remotes, these two worked astonishingly well. I practically had to take them out of the room to get them not to register my keystrokes. I've only experienced this kind of performance on a RF remote. The unit came with an IR blaster (looks like a Cyclopes eye) which could be used but unless you store the unit in another room, I don't see how you'd need it.

Issues

While set top boxes are known for their stability, they tend to have limited upgradeability. The DMS-701 HTPC Media Server is completely upgradeable, but it had a number of problems that were as amusing as they were confusing (amusing because this is a review unit that I didn't pay for, if I had paid $2800 for this unit, I may not have been laughing as much as I did). The two major issues were the internal wireless card and a standby problem. Apparently, with the dual core processor that I was using, the unit would freeze once it went into standby mode. 2partsfusion had me disable the standby mode while they researched the problem. This is one of the reasons I was so keen on the Visualizations during music playback - preventing burn-in. 2partsfusion eventually found out that there was a driver conflict and the manufacturer was putting together an update but it was not completed for in time for the review. Personally, this sounds like a relatively minor issue, and once it was fixed, it was. But it caused all sorts of problems at weird places so it took me a while to figure out what it was. Once we disabled the standby mode, 90% of my issues with the unit were resolved.

Manufacturer's Note: Standby issue occurs only with the combination of the Hauppauge PVR-500 and AMD Dual Core-Processors. This is related specifically to the present Hauppauge PVR-500 drivers and is being addressed. Additionally, at this time there is a workaround and does not affect the DMS-701 utilizing a different PVR card(s) or other DMS models.

The internal wireless card was another separate issue altogether - one that was never actually fixed. For some reason that no one can understand, the wireless card would not initiate on startup. At the same time, I was having problems with my wireless keyboard (more on that below) and would have to plug in a PS/2 mouse in order to navigate the windows desktop interface. Well, whenever I plugged in the mouse and restarted, magically, the wireless card would start working. After two or three times of this, I made the connection and tested it empirically. Yep, no matter what I did, the internal card wouldn't initiate unless I had a either a PS/2 mouse or keyboard plugged in. Eventually, 2partsfusion sent me a USB wireless adapter and that was that. A strange problem with an easy fix.

I had many remote/wireless keyboard issues. First one would work, and then the other. I'd have double scrolling or none at all. For a while, when I hit OK while watching TV, it would send me back to the last channel viewed (I liked this) until I had a different problem and the "fix" for that problem "unfixed" the other functionality. For a while, hitting the button "Live TV" would send me to whichever channel I was last watching. Later, it would send me to the TV menu and I'd have to select live TV. For a while the remote was doubling all the button presses and later it would only take one. Many of these were obviously driver issues. Once I got the bulk of the remote issues under control, I didn't want to try to fix the little stuff for fear of breaking something else. Regardless of what driver I was using, double entries on the remote keypad (except 11 and not the keyboard) would almost always register as a "back" command. So, when I wanted to view SciFi (66 in my area), I'd have a press 6, wait a second, then hit 6 again or risk going back to the last menu I was on. If I waited too long, it would send me to channel 6.

Placing a DVD in the drive would bring up a prompt asking if you want to play the disc. Leave the disc in the drive for too long, and suddenly, it is not there anymore, at least not to the unit. If you leave the disc in and restart it (and the unit starts back up which sometimes it wouldn't), the disc wouldn't be recognized. Not a huge problem as all you had to do is eject and reinsert it but it was an annoyance that is surely the result of the PC platform.

Conclusions and Overall Perceptions

As this product is really marketed to the HTPC market - people that have neither the time nor the ability to put together an HTPC on their own, this product is a success. Once the kinks were worked out and the most of the conflicts resolved, the unit worked like a dream. It would hiccup occasionally as if to say, "Hey, don't forget, I'm a PC!" I asked my wife what she thought of the DMS-701 and her response was, "I love it." When asked why, she said it was because she could record TV with the caveat that she didn't really know what else it could do. And therein lays the rub of the unit: the PC platform. If you expect this unit to operate like a set top box, you are going to be disappointed. If you are at all PC savvy and don't mind having to fiddle with it a little, the DMS-701 can be a toy that will bring you years of pleasure. As much as I like to think of myself as a thorough reviewer, I've only covered a small amount of what the DMS-701 can do. It is limited only by the latest technology, your computer literacy, and your imagination. At its price point and features, no set-top box can touch it (at least nothing that I've reviewed). When you factor in the customer service, the extra cost of having 2partsfusion build it for you rather than putting it together yourself balances out. If you have the ability to build your own, then do so. If not, and you want to buy a box that is thousands less than its set-top counterparts and customer service that you can count on, you should take a hard look at the DSM-701.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Standard Definition Video Performance
Analogue Audio Performance
Bass Management
Build Quality
Ergonomics & Usability
Ease of Setup
Features
Remote Control
Deinterlacing & Scaling
Noise Reduction
Calibration Options
Performance
Value