Sony announced its latest Vaio Digital Living System Media Center, the XL3, at CES. The XL3 is a liquid-cooled digital cable HDTV Media Center based on Windows Vista Home Premium that includes both a slot-loading Blu-ray drive and a CableCARD slot. It's powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive and an Nvidia GeForce 7600 GTL video card. Sony claims it's virtually silent at 30 decibels. In addition to HDMI out, it includes component out, various memory card slots, and optical input and output. See enlarged images for details.  As you probably know, the CableCARD addition means this device can replace your cable box and play and record HDTV directly off the cable.

Unfortunately, Sony couldn't confirm a Multistream CableCARD Interface 2.0. Therefore, if it doesn't support 2.0, it will be a single-tuner Media Center. At the somewhat steep MSRP of $3,300, we're hoping it's CableCARD 2.0 compatible. Otherwise, it looks like a very nice implementation of a CableCARD-based Media Center. March availability.

Sony.com

Sony XL3 Front

Sony XL3 Front Open

Sony XL3 Back

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