Considering that media centre PCs have been around for a year or two, it's a wonder that the bigger brands haven't already saturated the market with the buggers. But it's an area of home cinema that has remained largely exclusive to computer specific companies and smaller installer friendly start-ups (aside from Sony's numerous tepid attempts with proprietary software- driven Viaos).

Until now. Philips, the Dutch consumer electronic superpower, has just entered the fray with a machine that makes the most of the company's unrivalled picture processing experience.

The MCP9350i certainly looks the part. It resembles a high-end DVD or HD DVD player rather than a PC, media or otherwise. This is largely in part to the digital read-out, centre-mounted DVD tray and a range of legends along the bottom-right. One of these states that it includes an HDD - Hard Disk Drive - a true indication that this is mostly aimed at the non-computer literate. The only badge that spoils the aesthetic ambience is for the interior Intel Pentium 4 processor. Apart from that minor geek-related fashion disaster, it's as non-PC as a Roy 'Chubby' Brown gig.

Rear-mounted connections are more akin to AV kit than computers too. Obvious PC additions exist, such as DVI (which can double as an HDMI out using the included adaptor) and VGA video ports, but an RGB-enabled Scart output is fairly unusual round these parts. It's also heartening to find an optical digital audio output alongside a coaxial one - usually such machines just feature the latter.

Also unusual is the presence of S-video, composite video and analogue stereo inputs, and two sets to boot. They allow you to connect other video sources, such as a cable or Sky set-top box and, if you connect an IR blaster lead or two, you can use the pre-installed Media Center Edition 2005 to control or record from them. The software's internet-driven 14-day electronic programming guide (through Wi-fi or LAN hook-up) will even download channel information for whatever system you're using (such as Telewest or NTL).