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More Details on the Upcoming Shuttle Media Center PC


Shuttle’s Upcoming MCE-01 Media Center PC

Techconnect Magazine – Preview: Shuttle Codename MCE-01 – Page 1 Wow! Is she ever beautiful! I’m drooling. This is one sexy piece of ass, I mean hardware. Tech Connect Magazine is out with more detais on the new Shuttle Media Center PC scheduled for release later this year. Apparently they are now calling the thing MCE-01 (some genius in marketing no doubt).

The Shuttle MCE-01 has an extremely nice form factor as well as quiet but significant power. The unit is powered by the Intel 915M chipset which are usually manufactured for notebooks. The key here is quiet.

The unit runs a ATI x300 graphics card, includes a 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound card, a wireless Lan card and even an FM tuner (no word on how these FM broadcasts would interface with MCE, I doubt they will but it would be hot if they did).

The design also features a dual internal/external drive combo scenario. The idea here is portability and it is a good one. Personally I think an external USB 2 Maxtor or a latptop on the LAN works just as well for me but I could see where it might be nice to have an all in one unit with easy external portabilty.

The remote looks pretty plain vanilla. Personally I’m looking for some of these high end systems to come out with better remotes. Niveus has a new Pocket PC remote that looks pretty cool. What would be really cool though would be an RF remote that could be used anywhere in the house that also served as a wireless phone.

You might remember the last time that we saw more details on this upcoming offering from Shuttle was back over at Anandtech’s site when they picked it up as part of their CES coverage. Personally I liked the name Sonoma better than MCE-01 but, hey, that’s just me.

One thing that is noticeably missing from this new promotion piece over at TechConnect is the HDTV CableCARD slot that Anandtech reported on back in January. Very noticeably absent actually. I’m not sure if Shuttle is still planning on offering a CableCARD slot with this new PC but it did appear in the original prototype and I’m not sure why it’s not mentioned in the TechConnect piece.


Updated photo. Thanks to an anonymous commenter who pointed out that my original photo of the Shuttle CableCARD box was the wrong one. The correct one is here.

Obviously the extra year extension for the implementation of an FCC CableCARD mandate may have impacted this product feature. If someone has any clarification on this aspect as well as what Microsoft might have planned for HDTV in the MCE 2005 update I’d love to hear about it.


Zum Schliessen ins Bild Kliecen! Which means god only knows what — but another photo of the back of the Shuttle PC from CES from a German site. Thanks Dave for pointing this photo out. That’s the CableCARD slot there right above those sexy green, blue and red component video outputs!

Thanks, Kevin and Bridget!

5 Replies to “More Details on the Upcoming Shuttle Media Center PC”

  1. Fantastic case. It’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for.

    To clear two things up, Sonoma was not the name of this system. Sonoma is Intel’s codename for the second generation Centrino (Pentium M, Mobile 915 Express “Alviso” chipset, and A/B/G wifi) that the MCE-01 is based on.

    Also, that second photo is not the CableCard slot. It’s actually the front-mounted external 2.5″ hard drive. The CableCard slot, assuming there still is one, is located on the back above the VGA/component video out. (Photo here)

  2. I found a photo of the back of the MCE-01 that was at CeBIT. Quite a bit different than the previous prototype linked above. The angle makes it tough to see, but the CableCard slot is still in the same place (unless they replaced it with a wide flat cooling vent).

  3. “Zum Schliessen ins Bild Klicken” means “To close (this window) click on the picture”

  4. It’s what I’m searching for in my home for second PC. What are Acer, HP and other do ?

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