To fully use the capabilities of the Shuttle SG33G5M, you have to use either Windows XP Media Center Edition or VISTA Ultimate Edition. We used VISTA 32BIT Ultimate edition, and here are our test findings. After connecting the SG33G5M with a 32" Samsung TFT LCD screen and booting into Windows, we first noticed a rather nasty issue, that of improper scaling. The Intel GMA3100 doesn't properly scale the desktop to the whole area, despite the fact that it recognizes and sets the resolution to 1280x720p@50Mhz. Changing to 60Mhz didn't have any effect.

Let's zoom in and see that the Windows bar and left have been cropped off. This has a direct impact when viewing movies, since the content will not properly scale to the resolution of your TV.

More display properties

The front VFD screen responds immediately to Media Center use and gives corresponding messages:

When you start playing content, there are several indications that light up: