Boulder, Colo. — Silicon Mountain Holdings said Monday it is now selling 32- and 42-inch HD LCD TVs that integrate full-function PCs and Blu-ray Disc/DVD players.
The hybrid HDTV/PC systems, which Silicon Mountain is calling Allio, will be the first products or their kind in North America, the company said. The first products are available down through online retail partner Visionman.
The flagship Allio model combines a Full HD 1080p 42-inch LCD display with a combo Blu-ray/DVD player; built-in PVR functionality; and a full-function PC equipped with an Intel Core2Duo E8400 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive and the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium. In addition to the analog and digital audio-video inputs common to high-def televisions, Allio includes wireless and wired networking capabilities and several USB ports to extend the experience to other computers and peripherals in the home.
Silicon Mountain will offer the Allio HD TV/PC system in six configurations including entry-level 32- and 42-inch models with an Intel 2.5 GHz PDC E5200, 250GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, DVD/CD support and Vista Home Premium for suggested retails of $1,599 and $1,999, respectively.
The middle system in the series adds PVR and Blu-ray support and an upgraded 2.54GHz Core2Duo E7200 processor for $2,199 (32-inch) and $2,399 (42-inch).
The flagship Allio system steps up the RAM and storage to 4GB and 1TB, respectively, for $2,399 and $2,799.
The systems will enable streaming high-definition content from providers including Joost, Hulu and TidalTV, in addition to such sites as YouTube.
Allio’s channel choices include satellite and Internet. Media libraries can be combined, shared and played from a single device, including music files and DVDs.
“The Allio HD TV/PC takes the digital experience into another dimension,” stated Tre Cates, Silicon Mountain president and CEO. “During product development, we discovered that our testers regularly expressed disappointment in their own large-screen television and home-theater configurations after using Allio for just a few hours. The results are clear. The Allio HD TV/PC experience simply suits our modern digital lifestyle better. The converged experience will boost productivity and interactive behaviors, and bring families together around the next generation of appliance, just as the early television and radio did for generations past.”
Picture-in-picture and split-screen capabilities allow multiple sources of content to operate together on a single large screen, the company said.
A Blu-ray or DVD can be watched in one window, while television is viewed in another pane, with computing tasks occurring simultaneously.
For the budget-minded, Silicon Mountain said it plans to launch configurations based on the Ubuntu Linux operating system to hit lower price points.
All systems are assembled in Northern California, the company said.
