Shola's Home Gadgets

I'm thinking of getting a Home Theatre PC to replace my home entertainment equipment in the living room. A few years ago if you mentioned having a PC in the living room, you would not only be called a geek, but you would be asking for trouble from your spouse. A lot of things have changed, and now even though not very common it is becoming acceptable to have PCs in the living room.

So why use a HTPC to replace the normal entertainment equipment in the living room. With the advent of the digital revolution, it now makes sense to have everything in one place Music, DVD, TV, Pictures, Internet News, Weather Info, the list could go on. If enough storage is built into the system, you could get rid of those disgusting CD/DVD racks and have arm chair access to your whole Music/Film collection, flick easily between live TV and the internet checking the latest travel info or watch a slideshow of photos from your last holiday while listening to some cool jazz.

There are two main requirements for a HTPC.

The first being suitable hardware that wouldn't look out of place in the living room.
The second is a robust operating system running the necessary software to emulate all the devices that it would be replacing.

For non-technical end users, the easiest approach is usually to buy an off the shelf HTPC, these are available for a high premium, and can be tailored to your own specifications.

If however you are computer savvy and don't mind getting your hands dirty, then you can buy all the parts individually and build a system totally tailored to your specifications and at a much more modest price.

In my next post, I'll talk about some hardware/software solutions and what I'm planning to build for my system.