HP Unveils Consumer PCs and Notebooks Before CES

The new products will be on display at next week's CES extravaganza in Las Vegas.

The PCs come in different configurations tailored toward consumers with different digital media interests ranging from photographers to home-theater enthusiasts.

For the dedicated digital video viewer, the HP Pavilion Slimline s3330f PC is one-third the size of a conventional tower PC and features a dual-format Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player and a TV tuner that allow users to record TV shows and play high-definition movies. Users will be able to play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD movies, keeping HP out of the high-definition DVD format wars. It also has a NVIDIA GeForce 8500 card with HDMI port to connect the PC to high-definition television sets. The HP Pavilion Slimline s3330f PC starts at $949.

The HP Pavilion Elite m9100 series PC features 4 GB of memory and Intel's QuadCoreT processor and ships with the Windows Vista Home Premium's 64-bit edition and is meant to suit consumers seeking the high-end home entertainment experience. Two built-in drive bays allow for up to 1 TB of additional storage and users can set the PC to automatically back up files. The HP Pavilion Elite m9100 series PC starts at $1,159.

The HP Pavilion Media Center m8330f PC leverages an AMD Phenom 9500 Quad Core processor and allows users to capture, organize and play television programs, movies, music and photos. The HP Pavilion Media Center m8330f PC starts at $959.

The HP Pavilion a6330f PC is configured to be appealing to photo enthusiasts and features a 500 GB hard drive and can store up to 218,000 photos, according to HP. Included with the a6330f is HP Photosmart Essential software that allows users to organize and edit their digital images. An HP Pocket Media Drive bay allows users to add storage and a 15-in-1 memory card reader allows for easy downloading from digital cameras. The HP Pavilion a6330f PC starts at $649.

The new HP desktop PCs are expected to be available in February.

On the notebook side, HP is launching the HP Pavilion tx2000 Series Entertainment Notebook PC for consumers seeking a high-performance PC and who frequently capture handwritten documents and drawings. With a 12.1-inch touch-screen display that rotates 180 degrees and folds flat, the tx2000 is optimized for handwriting capture. The notebook also comes with HP QuickPlay entertainment software, a webcam and a microphone to enable video chatting. The HP Pavilion tx2000 series Notebook PC starts at $1,299.

For the home-theater connoisseur is the HP Pavilion HDX series Entertainment Notebook PC with 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS video graphics and an Intel CoreT 2 Extreme and Intel CoreT 2 Duo processors. Like the Slimline s3330f PC, the HDX notebook has both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD support and a 20.1-inch display. Four Altec Lansing speakers and a HP Triple Bass Relfex Subwoofer provide the audio.

The HDX also includes a mobile full-function remote control, dual hard disk drives and an eSata port for high-speed data transfer. The notebook starts at $1,999.99.

HP also announced two monitors: the w2408h and the w2207h monitors. Both are outfitted with VGA and HDMI connections with improved contrast ratios. The 2480h Vivid Color 24-inch diagonal windscreen flat panel starts at $499. The w2207h 22-inch diagonal monitor has a BrightView panel and starts at $349.