Black Boxes: Choose Your Destination

by Jim Mikles
Spring 1998

Gateway Destination D6 Series
$3,500-$5,000
Gateway 2000
PO Box 2000
North Sioux City, SD 57049-2000
605-232-2000
www.gw2k.com

To manufacture a high-end PC/TV that is worth the price is challenging, but to continually upgrade and improve it--as Gateway 2000 has done with its Destination series--shows commitment to both convergence and customer satisfaction. For our review, we evaluated the Destination D6-233, which at the time was the only home theater PC that included both a DVD-ROM drive and an Intel Pentium II processor.

The D6 we tested in our home theater lab featured a 233 MMX Pentium II processor with a 6.4 GB hard disk, 64MB RAM, a 31" monitor and a first-generation Toshiba DVD-ROM drive. With a Pentium II 233, we expected it to run really fast. It did. There are also 266 and 300 MHz big-screen models that run even faster.

But you don't have a PC in your living room just to set speed records (even if you can), and it was the hardware functionality and software intuitiveness that was the most impressive aspect of the Destination. Switching between the TV and PC was smooth, if a little bit slow, with the built-in Intel Smart TV (no, not related to us) technology. The Smart TV virtual channel interface, rendered on-screen with a click of a trackball remote, provides complete television control. Because nearly all the TV buttons are on-screen, the remote is simple, light and easy to use. The thumb-operated track ball and index-trigger added significantly to the casual 10-foot pointing experience.

Both the remote control and the wireless keyboard use an RF (radio frequency) signal as opposed to IR (infrared), so they exert control through walls and furniture and won't lose their power at a distance. The touch-pad pointer on the keyboard was the only aspect of the input that seemed difficult to manipulate. Tremulous hands or large fingers do better with a trackball, but you can wire a mouse to the keyboard if you must. There is no standard joystick that ships with the system. The Destination is built to customer specifications and are shipped stock with either a Boston Acoustics or Harman/Kardon hi-fidelity surround sound stereo system. The Harman-Kardon system that accompanied our D6 was a seven-piece ensemble that included an AVR-10 audio/video receiver with Dolby Pro Logic surround sound, 30W left, right and center speakers, two 20W rear speakers and a 50W woofer the size of a small coffee table that really set the floor to shaking.

The documentation was satisfactory, but to set the system up perfectly calibrated with a VCR and satellite dish or cable system took a few hours and, because we wanted a complete S-video configuration, it also required a few extra composite audio cables. The box has S-video, composite and coaxial in-jacks, though, so there's room for lots of peripheral components and a variety of configuration options. The Destination created the most extensive and fulfilling PC/TV experience we've seen to date. Not only is it available with Pentium II, but it was the first system to include a standard DVD-ROM drive--which can also run DVD-video, CD-ROM, CD-audio and CD-video. Pop in the Road Rash CD-ROM--part of the standard software bundle--to check the 3D graphics acceleration afforded by the Apocalypse 3D graphics card. Although rendering is quick, purists will be somewhat disappointed with the lack of depth and texturing capability.

The Internet on the Destination--delivered via a 56.6Kbs x2 modem--also provided a very rich 10-foot viewing experience. Effortless rendering of VRML, Shockwave and RealPlayer content on the big screen makes for incredibly lively Internet TV. We were also pleased that the powerful processor could actually be used for more mundane work duties when needed. (Of course you would assume this to always be the case, but it isn't). Even if you aren't going to regularly balance the family budget on the living room TV screen, it's reassuring to know that the screen definition is good enough to word process, run spreadsheets, illustrate and design. The only thing on the system we managed to incapacitate with relative ease was the first generation DVD-ROM drive, which didn't like to be confused. We froze it with a CD-Recordable disc, a beta-version DVD-ROM disc and a fingerprint-smudged CD-ROM. The moral? Use shrink-wrapped software and keep the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches at a distance and everything should work just fine.

The Destination works so fine, in fact, there's really almost nothing of substance to complain about, except for maybe the price. If you're going to drop $4,000-$5,000 on a system, this is the one to get. The Destination D6 300-XL is the latest release and features a 36-inch monitor and 300 MHz Pentium II processor. If you're interested in PC/TV, but can't afford the hefty price tag, see our story in this issue on building your own (A Perfect Match, page XXX).

Details Sidebar
Processor: 233, 266, 300 Mhz Pentium II MMX
Operating System: Windows 95
Modem Speed: 56.6. Kbps
DVD-ROM: 1x Toshiba
Video: 31" or 36" Destination screen, 4MB Apocalypse 3DX
Input: RF wireless keyboard, wireless remote,
TV Features: Intel-brand "Smart TV" user interface application, S-video and composite in jacks
Strengths: Pentium II, DVD-ROM, screen resolution
Weaknesses: Touch pad mouse, no free program guide option.

UniView 210
$399
Curtis Mathes
10911 Petal St.
Dallas, TX
214-503-5586
www.curtismathes.com

UniView 210 Falls Short

The Curtis Mathes uniView 210 is a respectable first try at an Internet TV set-top box by the well-known television manufacturer, but it falls short in too many areas for it to compete with the Microsoft WebTV Plus and Oracle NC boxes of the world. The uniView boasts plenty of bells and whistles--like a TV listings grid, speaker phone, fax, caller ID and personal organizer--but it falls short in the area of core functionality needed for a satisfactory Internet TV experience. We tested it on three different TVs, and perhaps the most overt example of the uniView's weakness is how the proprietary Web browser doesn't support the full width of a standard Web page. With your TV's normal 640x480 resolution, only about 2/3 of a typical page is displayed on the screen, regardless of your television screen size. This can very quickly become annoying--not only must you scroll down to read a page, but across as well. Other distractions include a flickering screen, slow page load times and the lack of any audio. Granted, most Internet set-top (Net-top) boxes don't support full Shockwave or RealPlayer (yet), but they do almost all support audio (either Shockwave or Real), and they can display the width of an entire Web page designed to most standard conventions. The uniView 210 didn't measure up in either of these key regards. It's also priced higher than comparable products and the uniView requires that users subscribe to Curtis Mathes Xpressway as their proprietary Internet Service Provider (ISP). It isn't unusual for a Net-top box to require that you use their proprietary ISP, but there are some that allow an independent server, and at $19.95 per month, Xpressway is expensive for what you get.

The 18 content "channels" Xpressway offers (news, sports, politics, community, arts, etc) are well conceived, visually pleasing and are really the best thing the uniView has going for it. The Xpressway pages fit in their entirety on the TV screen and the browser is optimized for the Xpressway interface, not surfing the Web. The Xpressway was one of the first of the Net-top boxes to offer a TV listings guide. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the listings from our area to download, so the grid wasn't very valuable. The Xpressway organizer feature, which includes a personal planner, worked great and would be useful for a laptop or a work computer, but it is of negligible value watching TV from the couch. On the positive side, the remote control cleverly incorporates a keypad of letters to allow users to enter text on-screen. It is convenient for entering URLs without switching to the wireless keyboard. This was a nice try at a Net-top box from a company that makes great TVs, but we expect this market will be rough on poor performers and future generations of this product will need to fix a couple of key deficiencies to succeed.

C-Phone Home
$650 ($300 with service plan)
C-Phone Corp.
6714 Netherlands Dr.
Wilmington, NC
910-772-9146
www.cphone.com

Call Home With C-Phone

The TV video phone has been around in concept for at least 20 years. Remember the Jetsons? Mr. Spacely would call George in his office to chew him out for snoozing at his desk. With increases in modem speeds and advances in video compression standards, technology has finally caught up with pop-culture.

The C-Phone Home, manufactured by the C-Phone Corp. of Wilmington, NC, uses a remote control and a slim set-top box cum camera to connect your TV to a telephone. The result is impressive real-time audio and video telephony through the TV over a standard analog phone line. The C-phone camera lens (f=1.8, five element) is included in the set-top box, which is about the size of the average cable converter. The remote control has an RF speaker built-in, so you speak to the remote, not the TV, and hear the other person from a speaker in the set-top box. The box connects to the TV using standard coaxial cable (modulated on channel 3 or 4, like most VCRs) or with RCA composite audio and video cables (so it works as an auxiliary input device).

We made a video phone call with the C-Phone in front of a skeptical crowd at our testing labs and we were all impressed with the simplicity of the user interface and the quality of the image and audio. What you get is far below the video quality of an actual TV program, but no video conferencing technology has been able to bridge that gap and the C-Phone is among the best real-time video solutions we've seen.

It's easy to place and receive calls using the on-screen menus and the remote control. As is typical with video conferencing technology, you have to decide on a compromise between resolution and frame rate. Simple settings like "high" or "low" resolution and "full" or "three-quarter" screen size make it easy to use for the average phone and TV person to use. Additional advanced settings allow you to choose a slow frame rate (greatest video detail, least amount of motion), a medium frame rate (average video detail and average amount of motion), or a fast frame rate (lowest video detail and greatest amount of motion). Hit one button to bring up a picture-in-picture screen of yourself, so you can see how you look to the person on the other end. You can dial phone numbers manually or store up to 20 numbers in the speed dial directory. An advanced feature menu allows some additional tweaking of the camera, phone, modem, video, and audio settings. This is important because the plain old telephone system wasn't designed to transmit video, and POTS anomalies are all too common.

The only complaint, really, is the price. There are two purchase options. You can buy it outright for $650, and you're all set to call anyone else who has a C-Phone (or anyone else who has a video phone that uses the H.324 video conferencing codec). Or you can subscribe to the C-Phone Video Network Service and purchase the phone for $300, than pay $9.95 per month (12-month minimum contract) for the subscription, plus an additional 29 cents per minute for all your video phone calls.

A good analogy to this is the cellular phone phenomenon. Cellular phones were around for a long time before the price point dropped low enough to allow the technology to go mainstream. The same could happen to the video phone market. But despite pricing concerns, the C-Phone Home is a well-designed, well-implemented product that represents what a video phone should be. Look for faster connection speeds and the addition of a Web browser to improve it even further.