Home theater PCs or Media Center PCs have really come a LONG way over the last few years. Gone are the standard beige towers – in fact many of today’s modern HTPC systems are modeled after home theater components.

Well Sony took that concept a step further by introducing the new VAIO TP1 Living Room PC during CES 2007. Folks -this was one funky looking PC. From the top, it actually reminds me of a slightly oversized Roomba Vac.. but the truth is – it’s a fully functional home theater PC system.

First off – the TP1 has a unique cylindrical design that will easily fit into anybody’s home – trust me.. no one will think it’s a computer!

The front of the TP1 has a hidden drive unit which slides out when you want to watch movies or listen to CDs. This is a fully functional Windows Media Center based system folks. There’s integrated HDMI support and a Windows Media Center compatible remote control (though I’m not crazy about the green button being up top).

Here’s what we know of the system specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• Windows Vista Home Premium Edition (which means you’ll be able to run Media Center.. though I would have preferred Windows Vista Ultimate)
• 300GB HDD
• Analog cable

From this picture here:

There looks to be the following inputs – an analog cable input, two USB ports, an audio input, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, optical out, Ethernet port, S-Video? HDMI out, and VGA out.

No word on pricing as of yet.

[Check it out]

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