Home Theater PCs (HTPC) are getting more and more attention nowadays. Many people are trying to find out what is the best media center to their needs and how the find a cheaply built media PC. The challenge in general is that it really depends on your needs what is the best HTPC, rather than what some recommendation says in the expert forum.
HTPC Depending on the User Needs
In this article, we will look in detail what makes a cheap computer worth of buying. In addition, we will discuss whether you should go for a custom or pre-built if you are looking for a HTPC on the cheap.
I will take an example user needs that we will discuss more in details:
- Watching movies and videos, both offline and online (Full HD and SD format)
- Storing and viewing photos
- Listening to the music
- Browsing in the internet websites
- Casually playing some games
If you look at the media center usage in this example, there are quite few elements that need to be taken into account.
1. The CPU and graphics card performance needs to be sufficient for full HD 1080p video playback.
2. Depending on how much you intend to play games sets high performance requirements as well.
3. As you plan to browse internet, it is not sufficient to have a media extender such as Apple TV or Sage TV as you want to use TV as a computer monitor.
When watching movies and playing music, it is important that you have a good remote control to control media files. Good remote control is also important from family usage adoption point of view, that is, how well your family will be using the media center. If it does not get used by your family, there is a high change that you will not end up using it that much either as living room is a shared space within the family members.
Elements of a Good Home Theater PC
Elements of a good home theater PC can be seen as follows:
- Sufficient performance for full HD video playback
- IR remote controlling possibility
- Good mouse and keyboard included as that enables browsing internet pages in the living room
As a conclusion for this kind of setup, while media extender such as Apple TV might sound good option as media center, it is not sufficient for your needs. Also if you are looking for converting an old laptop as media center, you will find that it is not necessarily fast enough to play HD video format. For this reason, the ideal media PC for your needs would be pre-built computer such as Asrock Ion 330 type of mini desktops or alternatively you might want to build it from custom components.
Should you Build Your Own or Buy a Pre-Built?
As more and more computer manufacturers are introducing mini desktop and nettop computers to the market, building your own PC is not necessarily as obvious choice as it was few years ago. In this part of the article, we will discuss whether it still makes sense to build custom system by yourself or should you buy a pre-built computer such Apple Mac Mini.
First, let’s look the benefits of the custom built compared to the pre-built computer. Generally, it is possible to build more powerful custom computer at the same price as Mac Mini. This is particularly important if you plan to play performance demanding games.
Secondly, Mac Mini does not support Blu-ray video playback out of the box, so if you plan to watch HD movies, this might be an issue. In principle, it is possible to use an external Blu-ray drive with Mac Mini.
Thirdly, custom PC is much easier to upgrade in the future if you need more performance. With Mac Mini, you can upgrade memory, but that is pretty much what you can upgrade by yourself.
Fourthly, you get to choose whatever case you want. Or even to make a unique custom made case that nobody else has. For example, I remember seeing one case made inside a metal box from IKEA. Not necessarily the most stylish design, but definitely unique.
However, you need to put a price to your own time as well. Building a computer can be a time consuming and even frustrating project. So, even if you could save a little money in building it yourself, you need to keep in mind the investment of work hours you put into the project.
When looking the benefits of Mac Mini over the custom, here are some examples.
The case is smaller and more stylish that any case currently available in the market. It has a huge wife acceptance factor compared to more bulky designs.
Although the CPU performance would not be the greatest on paper, the combination of well chosen components designed perfectly for the Mac OS X operating system, makes Mac Mini working faster than similar PC setups. Mac OS X operating system fits nicely to media center use. Front Row media center has excellent integration with iTunes, if you want to manage your media files with it. It also works out of the box without an effort.
If you are interested in building your own, read more about My Media Experience site’s media center PC guide about the optimal components.
Which One Should You Buy?
Pre-built nettop market has started to be much more competitive in the past few years. More and more mini desktop and nettop PCs are available in the market.
When looking at the low budget range of computers, the net top computer range start to look more and more attractive. There are cheap computers such as Asus Eee Box and Acer Aspire Revo that have very good price per performance ratio.
On the net top computer range, Acer Aspire Revo has received excellent reviews from the users. It has very small foot print and has good price performance ratio. However, if you end up buying Acer Revo, make sure that you get at least 2GB RAM memory, install the latest Windows 7 operating system and latest drivers particularly for the graphics card.
Acer Revo is not necessarily suitable as a low budget media center, if you do not know how to tweak the performance to get most out of the computer. For higher performance requirements and easiness of use, Mac Mini is still unbeatable. However, with the price of Mac Mini you can get two Acer Revos.
In summary, when looking for a affordable living room PC, building your own or not really depends on whether you put a price to your own time. Obviously you need to have the computer building skills as well, but that is something that can be learned. That is, if you are willing to put the time to learn. It is possible to get a good performance custom PC that beats the pre-built PC, but if you value your own time and do not have the needed motivation to the process, go for a pre-built one such as Acer Aspire Revo.
If you are interested in building your own, continue reading this guide about building the optimal media PC for HD video.
If you are interested in the pre-built nettops, here are top 3 reviews:
- Asrock Ion 330
- Acer Aspire Revo
- Apple Mac Mini
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010 My Media Experience