The Ultimate Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) On A Budget
Past Home Theater
There seems to be a shift happening in the midsts of our livingrooms. While some advanced techies might know, while the rest have no idea, is the fact that you can own a all-in-one Home Entertainment PC for under $450 and they’re called HTPCs. That’s the price of a PS3 or an Xbox360(plus a few games) and also the price I just sold my old Apple PowerBook G4 laptop for. I sold it because it could not run YouTube at its lowest quality anymore, nor could it ever run any HD movies. So I bought a PS3, thinking it could do all of that. Turns out, it doesn’t. It doesn’t read .MKV files (standard HD files you find online) and doesn’t play very well with my network harddrive, where I keep all my photos, music and movies. Nor does it load Revision3.com to watch my online streaming content.
This is what I was looking for in a home theater personal computer setup:
- Watch Blu-ray and DVD
- Watch movies from a hard drive
- Watch movies from my network hard drive
- Watch .MKV movie files
- Play all sorts of games
- Watch internet streaming videos like:
- YouTube in HD
- Revision3.com Internet Television
- College Humor
- Integrate perfectly with all my couch needs
So I get my research on and find the sweetest little systems, and I found them on TigerDirect.ca. I’m currently looking at a few different boxes, but these ones are winning:
Asus on Tiger Direct
$316.99 – Asus AT3N7A comes with:
- CPU: Intel ATOM 330 at 1.6GHz
- 2GB RAM (max 4 GB)
- HDMI port
- Bluetooth
- Plus $69.97 Blu-ray DVD combo driver
- Plus $59.97 Western Digital Caviar 500GB
- Grand Total: $445.94
Zotac on Tiger Direct
$290.99 Zotac IONITX-B-E comes with:
- Intel ATOM 330 at 1.6GHz
- 2GB (max 4GB)
- HDMI port
- Plus $69.97 Blu-ray DVD combo driver
- Plus $59.97 Western Digital Caviar 500GB
- Grand Total $420.93
See any resemblances? So, after all that, I kept the Blu-ray and ended with just a bit over my $450 limit; $475.65 with tax. I’m skipping out on the bluetooth keyboard/trackpad for now, that’s another $80 Canadian. I’ll wait till they get cheaper. For now, I’m using a wireless keyboard+mouse (not bluetooth), and it’s a little frustrating at times. I’ll see what I can do with my Apple remote though.
There were other suggestions including Popcorn Hour. A great media center that plays all of your HD and network needs at a super affordable price starting at $179 right up to $361 and look really good next to your TV. The only con about the Popcorn Hour is that you can’t browse the net, but you can stream from popular internet tv sites as in SHOUTcast™ Radio, Blip.tv, Revision 3 and dozens of other online content sources. Probably does Flixster as well.
There’s also Nettops like the Acer Aspire REVO. Some like them, some don’t. Those who like them, love them. Good price, does what it says it does. Can’t install Blu-Ray drives in them.
Once I buy my Zotac, I’ll be going through a few Media Centers. XBMC vs Windows Media Center vs anything I can find.
-Thanks goes out to everyone who helped me out: Rick Dupuis, Jay Mulligan, Greg Burke and HD Nation on Revision3.com
Tags: Computer, Home Theater, HTPC, Tech
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:40 am
I’ll look forward to the next instalment covering the SW, including which OS. I’m assuming you could use it as a music centre too?
cheers,
Andrew
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:45 am
@Andrew: I’m probably going to be running Windows 7, but I’ve never used it yet so we’ll see. I’ve been using XBMC for years now, and I’m pretty excited to try out different ones including the new Windows Media Center, MythTV and a couple more. And it will definitely do music, that was a big part of this project. I should have mentioned it before. Maybe I’ll update the article, thanks.
March 8th, 2010 at 7:54 am
*UPDATE* everything’s ordered through PC Cyber. Just waiting for the arrival of the case.