04.16.2007 — Alienware will be making its second, no third, maybe fourth attempt in the Media Center category with the forthcoming Hangar 18.

It’s the first product based on the snazzy new Home Cinema Media Center reference design from AMD. (Moxi is expected to follow with a Home Cinema-based DVR in the second half of this year, based on the Linux OS. Also, AMD mentioned Westinghouse during CES but it appears nothing has been said since then.)

The Hangar 18 looks very much like the HP z560 series, except that the Alienware product also includes a Blu-ray drive and, more significantly, a 1,000-watt amp (5 channels with 200 watts peak power output).

The product is expected to start at about $2,000, sans Blu-ray.

In the Beginning

Alienware dropped the ball with its earlier Media Center efforts. To be fair, I guess Microsoft dropped the ball, persuading manufacturers that Media Center would be a mass-market, fly-off-the-shelf product.

Remember the DHD all-in-one? Click here to see all of Alienware’s Media Center starts and stops since 2004.

First from Alienware in 2004 was the DHD integrated LCD television with Media Center built in. Then came a series of CE-looking standalone Media Centers, the DHS Series, which were fairly well received by the press, but not a big seller on the company Web site.

Alienware had hoped that its bread-and-butter customers, the technology-savvy gamers, would be equally as enamored of Alienware’s Media Center PCs as its renowned gaming machines.

At CES 2005, the PC maker announced a tie-in with gaming technology developer Discover, which put a My Games tab on the Media Center home page. From there, users could access games immediately when they slid a disc into the PC.

Alienware explained, “Simply put, Discover Technology turns the Alienware DHS 2 series of media center systems into a console video game machine for your PC games. For years, to play PC based games required a bit of technical knowledge about PCs: what resolution, what directory, what human-interface-device, etc. Alienware and Discover change all of that.”

Evidently, however, gamers were unimpressed. They already got what they needed from Alienware’s gaming machines, and probably didn’t care much about other MCE features, like sharing photos through the television.

If gaming wouldn’t be the killer app, how about home control?

At the CEDIA Expo in 2005, Alienware took a stab at a client device that doubled as a home controller and Media Center Extender.

Alienware introduced, but never shipped, a controller/Media Center Extender in 2005. Click here to see all of Alienware’s Media Center starts and stops since 2004.

The controller, which never went anywhere, featured five IR ports for controlling IR or serial (one-way) devices, one two-way RS-232 port, video and power sensing, two relays, and two contacts.

From “MCEdia 2005” in the November issue of CE Pro:

Alienware, which makes specialty computers for gaming and entertainment, showed a prototype control system powered by MCE. The company plans to incorporate automation and A/V control functions into Media Center Extenders, adding relays, serial ports, power sensing and IR capabilities to the otherwise dumb devices. Sound like the Niles Intellicontrol? Heading the Alienware initiative is David Aiello, who worked at Niles for 12 years.

The company plans to start shipping product, including a compatible Web tablet, in the first half of 2006.

Needless to say, the product never came to pass. Pity. This is exactly what we need in a Media Center Extender. (Where are the Media Center Extenders, by the way?!)

From Viiv to Live

In 2006, Alienware unleashed a string of Media Center products based on the then-new Viiv platform from Intel. Under the brand name Area-51, the lineup included the 3550 desktop and 5400 “all-in-one form factor that serves as a transportable entertainment desktop.”

It does not appear that the Viiv desktops ever went anywhere, even though new model numbers continued to replace older ones. Apparently the 5400 never shipped. (The Alienware Web site still says “Coming Soon!")

Alienware’s Viiv pages (http://www.alienware.com/viiv) takes you basically to a static page.

Alienware is Coming Back to Earth

So here comes Alienware again, and the company is determined to make Media Center work, now using AMD’s Live platform, which competes with Viiv. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with some of the Alienware folks, and they say they are eagerly working to establish appropriate partnerships and business models for the custom electronics channel.

Would dealers be interested in this product? Duh! The Alienware brand carries some strong cachet, and I can’t imagine any CE dealer or distributor—at least any that are interested in Media Center—passing up the opportunity to carry an Alienware line.

But Alienware still has a lot to learn about the channel and about consumer electronics. Still, they seem committed, the timing is right, and the Hangar 18 will probably cost significantly less than Sony’s XL3, even with the Hangar’s built-in five-channel amplifier. (That’s what happens when your parent company is Dell).

And while Sony is “very much open to collaborating with any retailer out there,” according to Sony’s Lauwaert, Alienware seems much more amenable to a pure-channel play—something that won’t be lost on the folks that are most likely to sell media-centric PCs.

Still, I think Alienware should price its “entry-level” Hangar 18 system more than $2,000, especially since it has the built-in amps, which the others do not. It also has a strong brand, right up there with Sony.

The company is still thinking like a PC company, where commodity products have no margin. If Alienware is to succeed in this channel, it needs to think of Hangar 18 as a premium A/V source, and price it accordingly.