Sharp has a new type of Mebius o­n the horizon -- the home theater version. The "Mebius PC-TX32" includes a 32" LCD, doubles as a hybrid recorder, and appears to offer all sorts of nifty HTPC functionality. More details inside.

Sharp announced the "Mebius PC-TX32J" three-in-one LCD TV/DVD recorder with internal hard drive/desktop PC, and will release it in late June. It is Open Price, but estimates put it around 330,000 yen.

The PC-TX32J is an AV center PC that uses an AV-style case for the machine itself and provides a 32" LCD TV as a display. It uses a Celeron D 335 processor (2.8GHz), 512MB of DDR SDRAM, a 250GB hard drive, and has a DVD Super Multi drive with dual layer support.

Not o­nly does the display itself have its own TV tuner for viewing TV without powering up the computer, but the computer has a TV tuner PCI card. This offers refined TV playback with high quality circuitry, allowing for now o­nly rich watching of TV but recording as well.

The included 32" LCD TV has a response rate of 12ms, brightness of 500cd/m², and a contrast ratio of 800:1...and is named the "Kameyama Panel" (a panel produced at Sharp's Kameyama Plant in Mie Prefecture's Kameyama City). The "Brightness Sensor" allows for optimal brightness adjustments depending o­n the viewing environment, while the "Image Quality Preset Mode" can automatically adjust image quality depending o­n video source (such as TV, DVD, or Movie). The TV itself offers a 3D Y/C filter, noise reduction, ghost reduction, and other such image quality refinement tools.

The display of different screens has been improved versus the multi-screen function of previous models, where this model supports "TV in PC" to allow for a small TV screen inside of a PC screen, or "PC in TV" offering just the opposite.

The remote controller also has been improved versus AV PCs, offering a button to go directly to the program guide, directly to the recording list, giving the entire setup a seamless feel not normally achievable through similar setups.

Inspired by:
http://www.itmedia.co.jp/pcupdate/articles/0506/09/news007.html

Press Release:
http://www.sharp.co.jp/corporate/news/050609-b.html