In a partnership with OpenELEC, Arctic is offering a limited edition MC001-XBMC Media Center PC for $229 out the door, but only while stock lasts. According to Arctic, this media center PC is “the perfect companion for those who want a noiseless, yet capable media system for the bedroom or living room.”
The unit itself is fairly well equipped, although a bit underpowered with its dual core Atom D525 processor from Intel, even with Linux underpinnings. Thankfully, Arctic has also included a Radeon HD 5430 GPU for hardware video decoding, giving it the necessary boost for media related tasks. Rounding out the configuration is 2GB of DDR3, a 1TB 5400 RPM hard drive, wireless-N, and TV tuner. XBMC 12 and OpenELEC 3.0 together give local and network media playback, as well as TV recording. Control is handled by the bundled IR Remote or any XBMC smartphone app for mobile devices.
The value proposition is decent at the regular price of $459, but $229 is an absolute steal if you’re looking for a dedicated PVR/TV set-top. Even if XBMC and OpenELEC 3.0 isn’t your software du jour, it could be easily repurposed into a dedicated Windows Media Center PC with Windows 8 Pro and the Media Center Add-On.
The MC001-XBMC is available directly from ARCTIC for $229 while stock lasts.
