Thoughts
Being a preview unit, and one that's not hitting market for a couple of months yet, it'd be a false positive to talk about support and related items just now. Conversations I've had with Tranquil in recent weeks have indicated they're going to beef up support for their products and that'll happen this year. They're quite a small company and they're working on it.The EPIA-SP-based unit's bundle options will be lessened by the lack of a PC Card slot and subsequent offer by Tranquil of a WiFi card to fill it. When asked whether they'd offer a USB WiFi solution during the order process on their website, they commented that it was unlikely due to margins on WiFi USB modules being small, making it cheaper for a consumer of the device to buy their own elsewhere. It'd be nice if Tranquil therefore validated a few possible choices with the unit, for their customers to reference when buying their own.
You'll get all the cabling required to take advantage of two tuners, should you spec that with your purchase, along with all the peripheral cabling required for the rest of the system and connection to your TV, along with the Windows Media Centre stock remote, a set of batteries and the card reader seen with the review unit recently.
As far as presentation is concerned, I'm not sure much will change between now and March. We'll get to peek at a final unit including bundle and presentation nearer the time, so I'll report back if anything changes.
Thoughts
EPIA-SP gives Tranquil's MCE2005 product in the T2 chassis the performance boost that it needed, to remove some of the sticking points I found in operation. The chassis' evolution gives you a bit more interior space in the right places, the PCI retention hardware is improved and the blissful silence remains.I'm much happier recommending an EPIA-SP-based Tranquil MCE2005 system than I am one based on EPIA MII, even if you do lose the PC Card slot and the hardware still can't manage hi-def video of the WMV9 flavour. Pricing shouldn't deviate too much from the EPIA MII version which makes it a better value for money prospect. I'm still not sure I'd personally pay the asking price that Tranquil want (unless two hard disks and tuners were rolled into the cost!), but it's definitely more attractive with EPIA-SP under the hood.
It's about time that VIA released the EPIA-SP and doing so has afforded Tranquil the opportunity to improve an extraordinarily well integrated and mostly silent Windows XP Media Center 2005 computer system, making it more attractive and increasingly worth the money. Tranquil's, desire, effort and customer service shouldn't be ignored either.
A fine step up for a product in the midst of good evolution. Look out for a top-up article on the unit as its official launch date of March 1st approaches, to cover the RAID implementation, final dual-tuner performance and performance using the MPEG-4 component drivers.
HEXUS Right2Reply
We gave Tranquil the opportunity to comment on the review and their Director, Sue Thompson, had this to say.Dear Ryszard,I'd like to thank Tranquil for the early look at their EPIA-SP efforts and their support during the article creation, answering all my questions courteously and swiftly.
Thanks for taking time to review the Tranquil T2e.MCE2005s (EPIA-SP), and for allowing us to provide feedback.
The latest addition to the range of EPIA boards from VIA has certainly provided to contribute to a tighter platform, on which to run more demanding applications.
The benefits of hardware assisted MPEG2, and soon MPEG4 (drivers), along with an increase in CPU speed, and DDR400 memory access, and other additions have all added up to a finer experience. The SATA (RAID) has been tested and adds faster disk access, along with the ability to use a 'single' drive in RAID 0 mode ie 320GB, and soon 600GB, which will provide a massive amount of video / music storage. Dual DVB-T tuner options and very high capacity HDDs will certainly be offered too. WMV HD is not likely to be supported until the T2e.MCE2005m is launched later in 2005.
The T2e chassis, certainly has evolved into a neat and tidy fanless solution, and all Tranquil T2 products from the end of this month will be built in this new housing. For more information on the T2 chassis - why not visit http://www.tranquilpc.co.uk
We certainly will continue the 'evolution' of the range of products, services and technical support.
As to your questions re the pricing policy, and extra bundled options - please watch this space. There will be a limited number of units available in February before the main launch, which is going to be toward the middle/end of March 2005.
Tranquil PC, a British company, provide solutions based on slim, stylish, sexy, reliable and silent platforms. Throughout 2005, the product range will be extended and enhanced, and we hope that the team at HEXUS will continue to provide feedback and honest reviews of our products in the future.
Regards,
Sue Thompson
Director
