Introducing The Home Theater PC (HTPC)

Home Theater PC (HTPC) is a computer which is intended to be used as a home entertainment center. HTPC can combine several devices into one box such as CD/DVD player, blu-ray player, PVR, game console, and so on. In practice, only imagination is the limit.

HDTV Revolution
TV technology has developed a lot in the past years and HD Ready or FullHD stickers starts to be common in many HDTV’s at the living room. Thus, it has started to make sense that this high quality TV could be used to display image from a computer. In addition to internet browsing, HTPC is a tempting concept. An affordable, couple year old computer is still capable of play DVD quality movies or your music and photo collection. Furthermore, if you have a good quality A/V receiver and speakers you are able to take listening your MP3 collection to whole new level. Even connecting a computer to TV using DVI-to-HDMI cable is simple and most of the computers are able to output SPDIF signal through an optical cable to your A/V receiver.

Performance Needs

Depending on your needs, HTPC does not necessarily be too powerful computer, but an older computer is sufficient. For example, if you need a music and photo player to the living room, most computers are capable of playing music without problems. The bigger consideration is where the music will be played. Do you play CDs, MP3s from an internal hard drive or MP3s from an external hard drive. Especially, if you plan to watch a lot of movies from the HTPC, you might need to consider an external hard drive as movies can easily fill-in your internal hard drive.

Does it work?

HTPC is a surprisingly useful device in the living room and has gradually replaced our DVR (Digital Video Recorder) box. HTPC is a good way to utilize PC hardware that is too slow for the latest games, but it still works well in a normal home theater PC use. It is quite bit different experience watching your holiday photos from a large TV screen compared to the computer display at the study room. Furthermore, you get to listen CDs more often that you would not normally listen as you can easily shuffle your music collection without changing CDs and listen to forgotten gems.

If you are interested in building a HTPC media center, continue reading how to choose optimal HTPC depending on usage needs.