Acer might not be an immediately familiar name, but as Europe's third-largest vendor of domestic PCs, the company is in a good position to make a splash in the nascent media centre PC market. Yet the Acer Aspire iDea 500 looks less like a PC than any other media centre I've seen. So what's going on?

I won't rehash the concept of the media centre PC again - it will be familiar to most readers - but basically it's Microsoft's attempt to dominate the entertainment market by inserting its customised entertainment software into carefully specified multi-media PCs. You can play DVDs and CDs, manage audio, video and still image files, and access the net on an MC PC; and behind the user-friendly graphic interface lurk all the functions of a standard computer.

Yet an element of potential customers must still be put off by the sheer computeriness of the media centre concept. So Acer has designed one which looks as little like a PC as possible - in fact, when I got it I thought I'd opened the wrong box. With desktop shape and discreet controls, the Aspire iDea 500 looks like nothing more than a premium-price DVD player. Slot it under your TV and slide its keyboard on top and you would never know it was a PC.

The front features a slot-loading disc drive, a line of transport controls, and a cluster of cursor keys. Under a rather fragile-looking flap are phono auxiliary AV inputs, S-video inputs, and headphone output. Even the DVD-R/RW and DTS logos on the front are reassuringly AV-ish. Yet under the fl ap there are also two USB inputs, a microphone input, a Firewire input, and two memory card slots which between them support seven formats - so images from your camcorder or still digital camera can be displayed easily.

Around the back, ports are both IT and AV: there are two USBs, Firewire, and LAN ports, plus two Scarts, two IR Blaster sockets, HDMI, DVI, component video, composite video, and S-video outs, RF In/Thru, 7.1-channel analogue audio outputs, and coaxial and optical digital audio outputs. Finally, there's a connector for a stubby wireless networking aerial.