Those who have been to their friends’ pads and discovered the joys of a Media Center PC will definitely go home and break open the piggy bank to see how much money is required in order to purchase a unit for yourself. The majority of Media Center PCs currently run on Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition, but the MediaREADY MC Digital Home Entertainment Center offers something very different. It uses its very own feature-rich software suite that was designed specifically for use on a television set, throwing some conventional computer interfaces out of the window (pardon the pun).

What do you get for your hard earned $899? For starters, you get an electronic program guide and TV tuning, bringing you one step closer to a paperless environment, One Touch personal video recording for easy storage of programs you want to watch, broadband connectivity with online update capabilities that enable you to surf the Internet at blazing speeds, built-in WiFi and Ethernet adapters, and an optical drive that plays and records both DVDs and CDs amongst others. You also get a media library function inside for you to manage and catalog all your video and audio files according to your preference.

All these functions are accessed via the included RF keyboard and remote control with a built-in navigation trackball. The MediaREADY MC is powered by a 2.8GHz processor, a 200GB hard drive, and 512MB of RAM (which should be bumped up considering the computer will undergo serious stress when performing multimedia tasks). Too bad you will only be able to see the MediaREADY MC grace your living room from January 2007 onwards as it will begin shipping by then.