Making a Home Theater PC

[spectre330]

Hello, I'm planning to make a HTPC media center. and i want to know the things to consider. Any suggestions and important points to keep in mind to make a media center? I would like to have windows on that because i have always used windows in my life. Whats your suggestion to me?

[Driscoll]

Although you can purchase a pre-built home theater PC (HTPC) at retail computer stores, building your own home theater PC is the best bang for the buck. In general emphasis is on the right side of playing HD content including Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and 1080p H.264 files, systems are in various categories HTPC microATX system (low-end and midrange), ATX system ( low end, midrange, high-end, premium), and Home Media Server (different storage capacities).

[RoninBlade]

A Home Theater Personal Computer gives your some of the following things or all of the following things: :

• In HTPC you can store digital audio & video files for playback.
• It gives you the pass-through of digital audio and Dolby Digital/DTS signals to your receiver for accurate surround sound processing.
• In HTPC you can get playback of DVD, CD, VCD, SVCD, MP3 and other formats.
• Outputs high-resolution video to your HD television or LCD/DLP projection system (alternatively, an HTPC can also output S-Video or component NTSC video, but we feel this defeats one of the main advantages of the HTPC).
• In HTPC you can output computer-only content to your display system (i.e. games, streaming content, internet browsing, etc).

[Rawko]

A few most common uses of the Home Theater PC are:

• Personal Video Recorder.
• Digital Music Storage
• Gaming
• Video Scaling