Digital Trends

Gateway FMC-901X May 11th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

When we opened the package and saw just how many parts come with the FMC-901X, we shivered with fear. The FMC-901X comes not only with the remote control, keyboard and mouse, but it also comes with every conceivable cable you can think of. Thankfully the instruction manual Gateway packs with the FMC-901X, is very detailed. You will want to set aside a good two hours to just getting this system setup.

On the video side of our home theater setup we have a 55” Mitsubishi WS-55819 HDTV, and Dish Networks PVR receiver. On the audio side, we have a Yamaha RV-1105 receiver and Axiom Audio Epic 80 speaker system. Because our television only had the S-Video inputs (the FMC-901X does not support component video) and no DVI input, we used this for our video tests. We chose to use the SPDIF output on the FMC-901X for the audio side.

We have to tell you that using the PC functions of this system on a big screen is very hard on the eyes. Even though the resolution was set at 1024x768 (the max we could put it at). The icons and text on the desktop side were almost too blurry to see. So unless your projection set has VGA, or DVI inputs, we want to warn you that the video quality while browsing the internet is sub par. This is not due to the Gateway system in particular but rather to the test setup which we have here at Designtechnica.

DVR Installation and Testing

A lot of people seem to think that you cannot hook up Microsoft Media Center operating system to satellite, and this simply is not true. Not only does it support satellite, but it can be fairly easy to setup. Gateway includes detailed instructions in the manual as well as an infrared repeater (or blaster as some call it) which you connect to the front of the satellite receiver. Once you go into the Media Center setup menu, the operating system will walk you through setting up the Gateway remote control to make sure it is compatible with your satellite or cable provider. If you have an RF based remote control with your cable/satellite receiver you will have to see if there is a way to switch it over to infrared; if not you will need to purchase a converter. Once we got the remote control synched we proceeded to test the DVR capabilities of this system.

The online channel guide provided with the Media Center OS is very easy on the eyes and simple to setup and use. We were able to get the channel guide to find our Dish Network program guide so both were synched. Setting up the system to record a show works great because you can browse the web, play a video game or watch the show you are recording all at the same time. Our recording showed no playback errors and did not seem to be hindered by the multi-tasking. This may however not be the case on the lower powered Celeron system which has less system memory and does not support Hyper-threading. So if you have experience with this version, please post it in the user review section. The integrated DVR worked flawlessly in our tests and even shut down the system when it finished recording.