Shuttle rises from the dead

SHUTTLE KIND OF fell off the radar a couple of years ago, and its showings have been technically interesting but uninspiring. That all changed at this year's Computex, where the company showed off all the right things for the right reasons.

What you see are not Shuttle boxes with the mobos pulled out, they are the new line of Shuttle mobos. Yup, they are back in the business, and had 6 mobos out with everything for Intel and AMD CPUs with Intel and Nvidia chipsets. You are looking at the X38 and P35 versions.

If you wanted a Shuttle, but the PSU wasn't big enough, or your widget did not fit, now you can roll your own. It also opens up a lot of avenues for OEMs. Basically, this was a long overdue move that can only bode well for everyone, consumers and box builders alike.

The next major thing is a renaming of the lines. There are now three, two of which you are familiar with. The smaller box, formerly known as the G-series has been renamed the Glamor series. The bigger P-series is now called Prima.

Nothing mechanical was changed substantially, the core chassis is still the same and new models are constantly introduced. Today was mainly a branding effort on this front.

The new line is called D'VO standing for Digital Visualization Opera - not a name I would have chosen, but the hardware is solid so I can overlook that part. It is the new line of home theatre PCs, a G-series chassis with gold trim. The mobos are more media-oriented as well.

It has the usual media center VFD readout, and in general looks much better than the plain vanilla Glamor model. I haven't been too taken by either gold trim or recent Shuttle styles, but this one works for me.

The initial D'VO box is an Intel G33 based box called the SG33G5M. In case you can't work out the models, it is a Shuttle G33 based Gen5 chassis Media center edition. Others will follow as needed, I think a 690 would work well in this box.

One thing the D'VOs all have is Dolby Digital Live and DTS 7.1 sound, it is standard on the entire series. Once Intel gets its driver problems sorted, this will be a really nice media center box, one of the first off the shelf that I would consider - if they have Linux drivers for everything.

Last but not least, there is a new suffix at Shuttle: Deluxe. You can get a SG33G5M-DD, the standard edition, or a SG33G5M-Deluxe. Depending on the version, it may add dynamic overclocking, solid state caps, Bluetooth, WiFi, fingerprint recognition and USB Speed Link.

The Speed Link feature is kind of cool, there is one USB port that you plug any other computer in to. It pops up a file transfer window, and you just swap among the machines in a standard two-pane configuration. It isn't rocket science but no one else does it. If you have a laptop and a Shuttle, no more burning DVDs to, err, shuttle things back and forth.

It looks like Shuttle is back. Shuttle had several innovative things on display, a trend that was lacking over the past few years. Here is to hoping this is the beginning of a long line. µ