Hi-Grade DMS II 3400 review

HiGrade's DMS II is one of a new breed of computers that takes home computing out of the spare bedroom and places it in the sitting room.

Rather than being a dour black or beige box, the Hi-Grade tends towards the look of posh hi-fi components, combining a silver finish with an LCD display and remote control. It might be stretching the truth to call its 80s styling 'retro chic', but the DMS II would happily find a home in the Computer Buyer living room.

ONE BOX, MANY FUNCTIONS

Rather than simply adding to the plethora of boxes and gadgets in your life, the DMS aims to replace a few of them. First, you can ditch your DVD player. The DMS II has a DVD writer, so as well as playing your favourite movies, you can create your own, burn them to a DVD and share them with your friends. It also has a 250GB hard disk, which, as well as providing space for loads of digital photos, will easily store your entire music collection.

TV tuners allow you to watch and record TV through your computer. The DMS II has two tuners fitted. This means you can watch one channel while you record another, or even record two different programmes at once. On the downside, both tuners are analogue, so you won't get access to digital Freeview telly. Although the hard disk has plenty of space for music and photos, you'll soon begin to run short if you record lots of video. A 30-minute TV program munches up more than 1GB of space, so be prepared to back up recordings to DVD.

It's all very well looking good and having all the right tools, but if you can't work out how to use them, it all becomes redundant. Thankfully, the DMS II uses Windows Media Center Edition. This provides a bold, clean set of controls that sit on top of standard Windows and incorporate programs for TV watching and recording, DVD and music playback, and image viewing. It's very easy to use, and all controlled by an infra-red remote, just like your TV or VCR. A wireless keyboard with an integrated trackball is also included. It's pretty shoddy, though, so if you plan to do more than surf the Net and watch movies, we'd recommend you budget £30 for a decent wireless keyboard and mouse.

Another slight reservation we had was noise. You don't want a computer in the living room that wails like a jet engine, and when you power it up, that's what the DMS does. Fortunately this lasts for only a few seconds before it calms down.

makING CONNECTions

Flip open the front panel, and a host of audio and video inputs are revealed, as well as USB and FireWire ports and a handy joystick control for the Media Center Interface. The rear of the DMS II is also littered with connections for video and audio, input and output as well as USB and FireWire ports. A SCART output is conspicuously absent, but an S-video and stereo audio to SCART converter is provided, enabling you to hook up the DMS II to your TV. Modem and network sockets are also on the rear, and the DMS II includes a wireless network adapter, which makes sharing photos, music and movies throughout your house far less messy.

Because it's designed to hook up to your existing TV, HiGrade doesn't bundle a monitor with the DMS II, so we would recommend that you budget for a large flat-panel display if you want to use the DMS II for 'proper' computing tasks.

And in spite of the fact that it looks like a hi-tech stereo component, the DMS II is a fully functional PC. Its Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor and 512MB of RAM provide enough oomph for video and photo editing, as well as general office work - a fact that's ably demonstrated by its score of 115 in our 2D benchmark test. But the ATI Radeon X300 graphics don't have enough kick to get the best out of modern games.