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Friday, August 7, 2009

HP Pavilion Elite m9715f Desktop PC

I went to Frys and looked at some TV tuners, but I don't really have a great desktop to put it in, I had priced making one on NewEgg and decided to buy a HP Pavilion Elite m9715f Desktop PC to see how it works, since you can't really get a demo at Frys, they don't even have an antenna connected to the display unit, no internet, no way to test anything. But since the return policy gets me 100% refund if I don't get it to work, I have not downside in trying it out at home and so I did.

It is a pretty compelling system, fast prcessor 8 Gigs and 750 GB HD, ATSC Haupage card and some cool looking USB bays for drives, that are no doubt really expensive, Vista Home Premium, uck, but I can get Windows 7 later, seems like a cool system. So I connect an Akai 42" HDTV monitor to it through HDMI get the sound to go out the HDTV speakers, Skype uses the headphone jack in the front, so far so good, I can run a TV feed and talk on Skype at the same time, no problem. Now I connect a AMW VGA screen next to the HDMI connector, a very tight space, barly fits. I got 2 monitors, one on the desktop and one for video, because the 1024x1024 HDTV is sure no good for a computer monitor. Windows Media Center basically works, although it did take a bit of tweeking and bew up once. However it has problems with the mouse, I can't watch a TV program and move the mouse out of it to the desktop monitor. I don't know if others do this, but I usually run the TV in the background. It is not an Apple product and iTunes has problems, full screen goes blank. I always have some issues with figuring out where the audio goes, I would like to be able to control what audio goes where. What video goes to which screen, is also a guessing game, which I would like to be able to control.

Fast, and cool, but rough around the edges, it isn't Apple quality, however the price is much better $699+tax.

6 comments:

Ron said...

Can you record HDTV from your antenna in HD? Or just SD?

RalfEriX said...

Yes, you can record both HD and SD, as long as you have disk space, I don't think you can downconvert HD to record it as SD.

Unknown said...

Nice post.!! I am a huge fan of HP desktop PCs. And pretty much interested in Elite m9715f.

Roy said...

I have the same system but have two major problems, cannot get the turner card to recognize Cox digital Cable. Also, can't get the system to wake after going into sleep mode! Ideas?

RalfEriX said...

Roy, I would install Win7 ASAP, mostly because Vista sucks and you might as well. I ultimately got blue screens and returned the HP, but really do like the idea of a media center and at 699 it was very well priced. For Cox, I wonder if you need cable card? I know that TWC has some QAM channels and others are encrypted.

RalfEriX said...

Saw the m9715f for $599 refurbished.