The Hanger18 includes the functionality of a modern PVR including watching, pausing, and rewinding live television, and the functionality of an advanced media player such as pictures, music, video, and Internet content. The system comes pre-configured by Alienware to eliminate software and hardware compatibility issues. Also, the player supports the necessary copy protection schemes on its video playback.
The standard unit ships with two tuner cards (1 analog, 1 digital/HD), and can be upgraded to have a total of four (2 analog, 2 digital/HD). With four tuner cards it's possible to record 4 TV shows at once. You can also view live TV while recording up to 3 shows. Video is stored on the included 250 GB hard drive that optionally upgraded to a much larger 2 TB drive. The 2 TB drive can store hundreds of hours of HD content.
A/V output is often one of the areas where most PCs are lacking. The Hangar18 features a similar amount of AV ports that you'd find on any modern home theater device, alongside the usual ports found on a modern computer.
The system ships with high end processor and video components making it a capable PC gaming machine as well. Windows Vista Premium comes standard, so all modern games should work properly alongside all of the media capabilities that are built into the Media Center program.
The unit doesn't ship with any kind of gaming controllers, but does ship with a custom remote control. The remote features all of the buttons necessary to control the media playback, and includes gyro-control which lets you move the cursor on the screen by tilting the remote, replacing a traditional mouse.
List of Audio/Visual ports
- HDMI with HDCP
- S-Video out
- Component
- Optical audio out
- 5 speaker audio out, with dedicated subwoofer port
- Composite in
- Stereo audio in
List of computer ports
- 4 USB 2.0 ports
- 1 Firewire
- Gigabit ethernet
- B/G wireless
Feature specifications
- Standard 250GB hard drive, up to 2TB optional
- AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core processor
- Up to 4GB of RAM
- nVidia graphics card, standard is 720p output with an optional card for FullHD 1080p
