Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion Media Center TV m7330n PC (AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+, 1.0 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, LightScribe DVD SuperMulti Drive)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

At first I was a little dissapointed when I recieved the Media center. It provides no way to interface with a television so I installed a 6600 Nvidia card with an aftermarket fan in the PCI express slot. One of the PCI card slots was occupied with a modem - I quickly threw that away. The inside of the computer is not made for expansion. There is no area for mounting additional hard drives and no board connections for plugging in my aftermarket fan. I had to use a Molex splitter to get power. I had no way to interface the sound system with my computer so I had to use a stereo to RCA cable to achieve sound. After rearanging much of the cables I have made room for my low profile ATA Raid Card and two 300 GB hard drives. Sadly uninstalling all the HP bloatware took three times as long as installing windows. I have no idea why I recieved a cd for AOL Latinos and had a link to it on the desktop. Finally I was able to enjoy media center - the system is very quiet and doesn't seem to have any major issues. It has had some errors when connecting to some of the web television but I think that has to do more with there server or net congestion. I am now able to watch all my favorite shows and fastforward/skip through all
the commercials. If you want you can build the exact same thing for about the same price. The OS is regular Media Center so there is no 64 bit extensions being utilized.

I submitted the following corrections:
X2 4200 is a 2.2 chip not a 2.0 as stated
The PCI-16 express card slot is not occupied as stated.
There is no video out capabilities to a television although not stated I found it implied.
The audio out does not consist of ports dealing with side speaker out, rear speaker out, center speaker out, line-in, line-out, microphone as stated. It has microphone in speaker out and digital out. The digital out can produce sounds to the speakers but there is not individual ports for all of those listed.

I PURCHASED THIS PRODUCT FROM CIRCUIT CITY TWO MONTHS AGO AND HAVE HAD NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS FROM THE START. FIRST THE DVD WRITER DRIVE SAID THAT WHEN I PUT A BLANK CD IN TO COPY IT SAYS THERE IS NO CD IN THAT DRIVE, CALLED HP AND FIXED THE PROBLEM FOR A WHILE.THEN MY MOUSE AND VIDEOS WOULD FREEZE AT CERTAIN POINTS, HAD TO TAKE IT TO GET FIXED AT CIRCUIT CITY. NOW JUST LAST WEEK A BLUE SCREEN CAME UP WHEN I BOOTED UP AND SAID WINDOWS WAS SHUT DOWN TO PREVENT DAMAGE TO YOU COMPUTER AND IT HAD JUST DUMPED MEMORY, AND THAT A SOFTWARE OR OTHER PROBLEM COULD RUIN THE COMPUTER...ALSO WHEN I LOADED MY CD IN THE E DRIVE IT SAID IT WAS IN THE F DRIVE BEFORE THIS HAPPEN. I WILL NEVER BUY A HP COMPUTER AGAIN BASED ON THESE PROBLEMS...I ADDED 1 GIG OF MEMEORY AND A GEFORCE 6600 VIDEO CARD FOR WHAT????

This is less about the product and more about the service and tech support offered by HP. HP has outsourced it's tech support to a company in India. The "technician" on the other end of the phone has never opened a computer case in his life... he is a slave to an Artificial Intelligence program (called an Expert System), and he has no authority to do anything other than what his screen tells him to do. You can give them a case ID number until you are blue in the face, but you will still get the litany of questions starting with, "Is the computer plugged in?" They were quick to come to a conclusion, send a replacement power supply and have me change it. The patient is still dead. The real answer for a new computer out of the box is that it should have gone back. But it is impossible to call someone in the U.S. with authority to do that, so after 11 days, I am still trapped here in outsourced tech-support purgatory. Perhaps my opinion will be updated if they ever resolve this and I get to see the computer in operation.

Update 06/06/06

After browbeating some poor guy in India for the umteenth time, he let slip a US phone number. I was able to get through to someone in the US for tech support; though it was was the wrong department, they were not slaves to the instructions on their screens, and got the problem resolved. The computer went back, they sent a new one, and it works very well.

GT

I wanted a PC that could serve as a DVR, and at the time this seemed the most affordable. It is a pretty good PC, but in less than 2 years it had problems: the self test reported problems with the HD, and after 2.5 years the motherboard died. Motherboard replacement with laber and diagnosis is about $230. Next time I am going to research which manufacturer is the most reliable. People tell me that "HP" stands for "has problems."

I have enjoyed my HP Media Center computer. The only problem I have had is burning music to CD's. The DVD burning works great, but the system seems to have some trouble burning to CDs. HP sent me a fix, but I didn't follow the directions to apply the fix yet, that since then the CD burning works ok.
This compuer does everything I need to do and the media center features are really cool. I would recommend it.

I'm a loyal fan of HP products because although I've had things break on HP in the past, the warrenty and support were good from HP.

I bought this product in April of 2006 and have had a good experience with the PC and its capabilities. I was very impressed by media center. I could watch TV on my pc while surfing the internet! It was also smart enough to find and categorize all my media including mp3s, photos, videos, and more. I love the TV feature to connect to my comcast tv guide. I can click on the tv schedule and click record. The box comes with an infrared channel changer, so when the PC know's it the right time to record, it will change the channel automatically on the channel box. That's awesome! I was happy to record many hours of star trek until my cat chewed up the thin wire connecting the infrared transmitter from my cable box to my pc adapter.

Things I'd like to have seen: faster, more memory, but I am going to upgrade this myself. The user manual was very easy and informative. I love the fast setup instruction manuals.