Why Compromise? The Living-Room PC
Fortunately, you don't need to torture yourself to achieve maximum playback and storage flexibility. Instead of buying a streamer box, we recommend spending a little more and simply putting a Media Center PC (or a Mac, for that matter) in your living room and hooking it up to your HDTV via HDMI. Every other streaming solution is basically a compromise, offering just a subset of a full PC's capabilities.
Trading up to a full PC for streaming has many advantages:
1. You won't be limited to what you can stream through Windows Media Center or any particular set-top box.
Your TV simply becomes a de facto computer display. Anything you can play on your PC, you can view on the big screen, including Amazon Unbox, Netflix Instant, YouTube, Flickr, and so on. Social worlds like Second Life, Facebook, and MySpace can become a group experience on the big screen, and you can use any slide-show software you like to present your photos. Playing Crysis on your big HDTV will also blow you away.
2. You won't be left behind every time some new video codec or streaming service comes along--you'll be able to enjoy new video sources as soon as they appear.
3. You'll interact with the PC interface you already know, and you can keep a wireless keyboard and mouse on the coffee table for anything the Media Center remote can't handle. And you'll have no delays while commands are transmitted to a remote PC, as with an extender.
4. You can expand storage as much as needed, and even use your PC as an HD DVR with an off-air ATSC tuner like Pinnacle's PCTV HD Pro Stick. Some Media Center PCs have CableCard slots for recording cable TV (you'll need to buy a PC with this capability built-in, since it requires special hardware), and soon DirecTV's HDPC-20 Tuner box should be available. All will let you integrate your regular TV viewing and DVR recording right into Media Center.
5. You can use whatever network connection you like, including gigabit ethernet or 5-GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi, both of which are rare in set-top boxes. For dropout- and jaggy-free HD streaming, the faster the connection, the better.
Brand-new Vista Media Center PCs can be had for as little as $500 to $600, including HDMI output. Considering that a set-top box or extender with decent storage will run you $350 or so, those extra bucks go a long way. You can also repurpose an old machine for the job, although you'll likely need to upgrade the video card for HDMI output and maybe a few other things like memory and storage.
And the PC should have Vista Home Premium or Ultimate for the best Media Center experience. One caution: make sure that the fan and disk drives are near-silent. Even a soft hum can be annoying when you are watching a movie.
Thinking of building your dream HD media PC yourself? Check out our must-see slide show, 12 Great Components for the Ultimate HD PC.
Ad Choices