29. Summary And Conclusions

As soon as your PC moves into the living room, you need to equip it with a remote control. This is mandatory on an HTPC, because nobody wants to abandon the comfortable remote operation that they've come to know and love with their DVD players and TV sets.

Soundgraph was one of the first manufacturers to move into this market niche, and offers a convincing array of different products designed for this purpose. Some case manufacturers, such as Silverstone and 3R Systems, have bundled the Soundgraph VFD iMON products into their HTPC cases. Other firms have even OEMed the Soundgraph products, jazzed them up, and offered them for sale under their own brand names.

This latter approach explains how Thermaltake was able to deliver a solid, useful product of its own to market, just by adapting the Soundgraph products for its own use. Thermaltake also shows nice workmanship on the front panel of its Media Lab series products, which are now finished in solid brushed aluminum. This actually results in a better looking device than the original offering from Soundgraph.

The M·Play series from VL System differentiates itself both in looks and capabilities from the Soundgraph offerings. The M·Play Blast offers a self-regulating fan controller as a special feature, which includes an external sensor that reacts when temperatures climb above a certain threshold. If temperatures get too high, the controller can boost the speed of up to two attached fans. After the added cooling brings temps back down, the controller backs the fans off to normal operating speeds. All this action, and more, is visible in the two-line VFD display.

The M·Play 202 omits the fan controller and temperature sensor, but otherwise has the same software and display functions as the Blast version. There is one small gotcha with these units, however: the M·Play products deliver their complete range of functions only with Windows Media Center 2005. Judicious use of plug-ins can permit normal Windows XP systems to overcome some of this deficit, but they can't catch all the way up. That said, we think this is a situation most users can live with.

The user interface for the infrared remote controls from Soundgraph or Thermaltake really isn't state of the art any more, and the functionality of the Soundgraph units suffers somewhat by comparison with the M·Play. Things look different with the new RF-based series from Soundgraph. The user interface not only looks great, it's also become more capable and supports more functionality. The smaller remote control is also more comfortable in the hand, though bigger than the oversized IR unit.

Those who want to skip the 5.25" display might want to consider the M·Play Mini instead. But those who want remote control and a good-looking VFD display will probably be best served by the M·Play 202 and Blast products from VL System. We would have recommended the M·Play products without reservation, had they offered their complete functionality under all versions of Windows. But since only those with Windows MCE 2005 will get the full value out of their investment in the M·Play units, we can't recommend them for everybody.

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