2 Parts Fusion
DMS Model 501
Reviewed By: Parker Clack
Page 1
As someone who reads a lot about new technology on the net I have been reading about and wanting to get a HTPC for some time. (For those of you that don't know HTPC stands for Home Theater PC. Another name that has been adopted for these units is DMS or Digital Media Server.)
I have been wanting to have a single piece of equipment that I could:
1) Record my favorite TV shows on to a Hard Drive or DVD
2) Playback my DVD collection at the highest resolution possible
3) Archive my CD collection
4) Record my home movies to DVD
5) Surf the net.
This is where an HTPC came into play.
2 Parts Fusion is a company that will be bringing their own brand of DMS to the market place. My review is on their model DMS 501.
As I pulled the unit out of the box the first thing that struck me was the solid build of the case itself. It was a lot heavier than I imagined it would be. I slid it into place in my HT rack and plugged in the necessary cables. In my case I used a DVI to HDMI cable provided by Blue Jeans Cable to hook up the video card to my Mitsubishi 62675 RPTV. I then plugged the S/PDIF output into my Outlaw 950 preamp. The IR receiver for the MCE remote was plugged into one of the USB ports. I hooked up the Gyration mouse and keyboard by plugging in the receiver into one of the USB ports. I connected my standard RF cable into the TV input on the tuner card and I was ready to go.
After I set up MCE I then went back into the video drivers for the NVIDIA card and set the resolution to 1280 x 720 (the native resolution of my RPTV) and then set up the audio card to tell it to send the S/PDIF signal to my preamp.
First up was selecting the TV shows that I wanted to record. I set up two programs that were on at the same time to record. I then jumped to a movie to see how the DVD player would work on my set. If you think that 480p looks good on your set you should see how the same movie looks upscaled to 720p. The DVD playback also has the added bonus of no visible layer change. With the large buffer that an HTPC has layer changes are seamless.
After putting several DVDs through the unit I was more than happy with the way that the DVD player handled anything that I put into it. (As a side note: The DMS comes with a break cable to go from the TV out to Component/S-Video/Composite out. If you attempt to play any type of DVD through this cable and you have your screen resolution set to anything higher than 480 you will not see anything from your DVD player. This is a restriction set by DVD manufacturers and the studios to limit playback to no higher than 480p through an analog output. If you use the DVI outputs there is no restriction and you can view a DVD at the resolution that you have your monitor set at.)
I then went back to the two shows that I recorded and was delighted with the results. As with any PVR you are able to set the recording quality. The higher the quality the less you can fit on your HD. With my DMS model having a 200G HD I have plenty of room to record all my favorites and my wife's too. I set the recording quality to good and the resulting image was as good as what I would see if I was watching live TV. This setting uses 2G of space for every one hour of recording. So I will be able to record up to 100 hours of TV shows. As with other PVR software you can also set this up so that it records just the one show or a series of the same show. You can set it up to record only first run or first run and repeats. You can also set it up so that it keeps a certain number of copies and delete the shows after you have watched them or keep them forever. With the built in DVD R you can easily burn a copy of you favorite show right from the HD to the DVD. The added bonus that MCE gives you over PVRs from companies such as Tivo and ReplayTV is that you do not have to pay any monthly fees to access your local TV guide.
Next I popped in a few CDs and archived them to the HD. If you have your HTPC connected to the net it downloads the CD coverart and song list for you. You can then go back in and find the music by its coverart instead of having to look for particular song titles. You can also edit your titles so that only what you want to keep is archived.
Next up I got out of MCE and jumped to one of my favorite places on the net to see what it would look like on a 62 inch RPTV. Home Theater Forum blown up large enough were you can see it across the room is something else. With my wireless mouse and keyboard I was able to download programs that I normally use while surfing the net and get them up and running in no time.
