It's built for performance and expandability. If you spend your time creating video, this thing can make short work of any kind of video content—whether you make short clips that you upload to YouTube or you produce video in high definition.
Besides video creation, this thing makes a great multimedia server that can store and serve all you digital music, photos, videos and recorded TV content in one place.
Hardwire-wise, this thing rocks: X38 chipset, processor support up to Intel's QX6850, video card options like ATI's 2400 PRO and NVIDIA's 8800GTX, and up to 3TB of storage. If you want to record or watch over-the-air high definition (or standard definition) TV, we offer the ATI 650 PRO combo TV tuner card as an option.
Note: 10/25—Direct2Dell reader Weeva correctly made the point that our current high-def TV tuner card only supports over-the-air HD, not Digital Cable or satellite high definition. LM
Update: 12/9—I just published a follow-on blog post that explains that we started offering the digital cable TV tuner on Friday last week. LM
Beyond that, it's our first product to feature the XPS MiniView screen, which is a small LCD screen (about 2 x 3in) integrated on the top of the chassis. The display supports a 320 x 240 resolution, and can be used to display calendar information, system details, and navigate through photos and digital music. MiniView is compatible with Microsoft's SideShow and supported third-party Gadgets, so users can customize the display for other information like RSS feeds, news, stock tickers and more.
If you are a person who likes to capture video and take it with you, the Dell Xcelerator is a cool option. It can be used to transcode recorded video from the original format to another so it can be played on a portable device. Beyond that, since it does the processing work on its own, the Xcelerator takes much of the burden off the processor, and makes the process faster than with just the CPU alone.
We're also introducing the SP2008WFP 20" widescreen display. It features a maximum resolution of 1680×1050, a 2ms response time, and HDCP through its DVI input. It's also our first flat panel to feature an integrated 2-megapixel webcam that can capture resolution up to 1600 x 1200.
In terms of software, the XPS 420 comes with Adobe Elements Studio, which is full versions of these three Adobe applications:
- Premiere Elements 4—For video editing
- Photoshop Elements 6—For digital photo organization and editing
- SoundBooth CS3—For audio editing and sound design
In this video, Michael Fahy from the XPS Product team covers a lot of ground. He touches on our design approach, SideShow, the Bluetooth media card reader, the Dell Xcelerator option, the Adobe software suite, the new display with the integrated webcam, and more.
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