New from Visionman is what appears to be a complete PC and high definition TV all put together in one tidy package. With my curiosity piqued, I decided to dig a bit deeper into this...
 
Which of the Allio models do I want? Well, I have a decently sized living room meaning the 42" is probably the best way to go. There are 2 models with Blu-Ray support, which I'd love to have. For the purpose of comparison, I will opt for the high end model, at $2599. I'm sure you will agree with me, but this seems like a rather hefty price tag! Why not just buy a TV off the internet, hook up a PC, and call it good? Today, we’re going to take the Allio challenge and see if we can do the exact same thing, for hundreds less.
 
To kick this off, I found an LG 42" LCD TV (42LG70) at Best Buy on special, for only $1599. This TV has all the features I need, including 1080p and plenty of HDMI inputs. Next I need a PC to hook up to this big guy. Cruising through the Best Buy website, I searched for entertainment PC's (that is what I'm after really) and found a nice Gateway 9600 for $1149. All said and done, my grand total so far is $2750! Still, it's $50 cheaper than the Allio.
 
I already have a TV stand, and the LG 42" fit on here perfectly. Where to put the PC? Since this Gateway is pretty small, I shoved it underneath on a shelf. The wiring was mostly painless, except for video! How in the world am I going to connect my PC to a TV when my PC has no HDMI port? I did some reading online, and it looks like a simple matter to convert my DVI output into HDMI. There just went $30 on an adapter plus a cable.

Time to connect my Comcast box, I subscribed to the digital HD package and now I want to use it. Upon initial inspection, I noticed a big problem. How in the world do I connect my cable box to the PC? No worries, there looks to be a coaxial port on the PC! Oh wait, it doesn't do clear QAM, meaning my cable signal is useless. But lucky me, I found a USB based Hauppauge TV tuner online for a paltry $80. Never mind the fact that I've just busted my budget.
 
Finally up and running, let's try out a Blu-Ray movie! I just happen to have a copy of Iron Man, the perfect candidate. Luckily this system came with a wireless keyboard & mouse.I found the playback to be fine, unless another program was running. Apparently this particular AMD processor is a bit underpowered, but I can deal.
 
For my next test, I want to be able to watch football (go Raiders!) and surf the net during half time. Sounds easy enough, but I think I just hit another glaring issue. While I have the game on, I'm not able to cleanly open a browser and do anything else! My internet connection is non-existent, because I didn't hookup the network cable. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to run a 50' CAT5 cable along my wall to my system. Time to go snag a wireless USB module - there just went another $50.

How is the picture quality? The contrast ratio on the Allio is 2000:1, whereas this nice new LG is 50000:1. What gives? Later on, I set them up side by side and played Iron Man once again. What was the difference? Nada. As usual, after a bit more research, it appears that manufacturers test their contrast ratios all sorts of different ways! Who to believe? Well, the most honest candidate is my own eyes, and truth be told this Allio 2000:1 looks just as good as anything else I've seen recently.
 
So for about $2810 I have a pile of hardware that sort of works. What would the Allio have done? Everything I wanted to do it one nice tidy little package - with beefier PC hardware. The Core 2 Duo in the Allio should let me do multiple things regardless if I have a movie playing or not, plus it has all the I/O devices that I didn't even know I needed (until 3 trips to Best Buy). How does the 32" model stack up? Using a similar LG 32" (32LG40), the story doesn't change. I still would've needed all those unplanned trips to the store, and the initial price delta between a pile of parts and the Allio is still minimal.
 
After further testing of the Allio, the main thing that trumps all is the ability to watch TV, record what I'm watching, surf the web, and have my email client open all at the same time, on one main screen. Switching between displays & windows with a tangle of cables killed my original hack job - if you want to do media right, the Allio is the way to go.