Product Reviews

It's been ages since ATI updated its All-In-Wonder series, and the company has been slow to introduce a PCI-E version of its card. Finally, the wait is over and the ATI All-In-Wonder X800GT is here.

Mesh has chosen this card for its Cubex X1, an attractive, compact and well-built media centre PC. Instead of installing Windows XP Media Center Edition, Mesh has opted for ATI's Multimedia Center software and bundled remote control. This is easy to set up. The All-In-Wonder offers analogue and digital TV tuners, so you can receive TV even if you live in an area with poor digital reception.

Multimedia Center is easy to use, and the remote control makes navigating through the application's interface a breeze. You can pause live TV, record the programme you are watching and record an analogue channel while watching a Freeview channel, and vice versa. Sadly, there's no built-in Electronic

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Programme Guide (EPG), one of the key features of Microsoft's Media Center. If you want one, you must pay for a TVTV subscription.

If you don't fancy paying the yearly £15 subscription fee, you can schedule recordings manually as if you were programming a video recorder. You can't use the remote control for this, though, and must switch to a separate Windows application. The process is not very intuitive, and you often have to double-check the settings as they sometimes fail to stick. You can watch TV in an Internet Explorer sidebar, a transparent window or even on your desktop by replacing your wallpaper with a live TV feed, which is fun if a bit gimmicky.

The Cubex managed a playable frame rate in our Doom 3 test, but as the X800GT has just eight-pipelines and 128MB RAM it is happier at lower resolutions. Still, it's fine for the occasional game.

SCART, S-video and composite ports are available on two plug-in dongles, and Mesh includes CyberLink's PowerDirector Express video editing software plus two FireWire 400 ports to connect a DV camcorder. PowerDirector Express is easy to use but lacks the versatility of Premiere Elements.

Mesh deserves credit for bundling a selection of quality peripherals, including a ViewSonic VX924 19" LCD, Creative Inspire T7900 7.1 surround-sound speakers and Logitech rechargeable wireless optical mouse and wireless keyboard. However, there are faster gaming PCs and better media centre PCs available for less money.