What's the Point of Building a Home Theater PC?

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has written Building a Basic HTPC. They discuss why Building a HTPC only makes sense if it can do something better than any other commercially available solution, as well as why HTPC should integrate act like a component not a computer. They also go into upsampling of DVDs to HDTV."

Comments

FPS

[TheSHAD0W]

Building a HTPC only makes sense if it can do something better than any other commercially available solution...

Two words: Half Life.

Why?

[scosol]

Porn.

Re:myHTPC r0x

[Anonymous Coward]

TROLL ALERT!!!

wife!??! not on slashdot...

Tell me about it!

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided one day to build a machine that could do laundry, make be breakfast, clean the house, and give me a blow job... then I realized I already had a wife!

Re:I can say the same thing about just about anyth

[UrgleHoth]

Why build your own PC?

Why build your own car?

Why build your own house?

Why do any of the above when you can just purchase the finished product outright which might be better than what you could build? Because we can.

For you, the resolute do-it-yourselfer, may I recommend the Dentist in a box

You thought I was joking? its for real, folks

Gee, what can an HTPC do that a console can't?

[ClioCJS]

• Let me surf for porn on my 36' TV. This alone should be enough to convert anyone. No need to read the rest of this post.
• Let me create hundreds of different playlists for my mp3s, rather than burning them to disk.
• In the rare event of missing a tv program, I can download shows in various obscure codecs (realplayer, xvid, divx5.latest, etc) and watch them on my 36' TV.
• I can record video straight to AVI, using the capture codec I choose, the compression codec I choose, and the digital image processing plugins that I choose. No PVR gives you the flexibility of virtualdub. I compress shows to 150-400M apiece, and fit far more minutes of video on a 4.5G DVD-R than a standard DVD could ever hope to hold. (Yes, some quality loss, but MUCH better than VHS, and cheaper.)
• No more buying blank VHS tapes either.
• I can play Quake3 on my 36' TV.
• I can record myself winning my favorite PlayStations game, then serve it up for downloads (okay, pulled that one out of my ass).
• I can backup dvds and play the backups on the same screen (my 36' tv) that my dvd player (my ps2) is hooked up to.
• I can play dvds much more reliably than with my PS2.
• I can run emulators and play Atari, C64, etc, on the big tv, not on the lil monitor, as they were meant to originally be played.
• I can choose my own OS. Can you tweak a hardware based player in the same way?
• Upon system failure, I can simply replace the failed component rather than the whole thing.
• By setting up Girder to control things via InfraRed remote, I can not only control my stereo, tv, and channel changing with my remote, but can also start/stop windows media player and basically use one remote for everything -- even pressing "ESC" or nudging my mousepointer around. Girder (www.girder.nl) and the IRMan (www.irman.com) work great together.
• Last but not least: I AM A GEEK. I ALREADY OWN A COMPUTER. I WILL ALWAYS OWN A COMPUTER. Why pay extra for something that does what my computer can already do? HARDWARE PLAYERS ARE DEAD. GIVE IT UP FOLKS. IT'S A DYING BREED. Jump of the wagon NOW!

Re:umm, price?!

[Thuktun]

True, but you'll be able to modify and/or upgrade it any way you want, whenever you want, without worrying about the warranty (since there is none)...

Once one voids the warranty by opening the unit, the issue of worrying about the warranty is neatly resolved.

Re:Not so redundant

[WM_NCDESTROY]

You see the Fnords? your conditioning must be wearing off. Remember: IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . . The Illuminati must be trying to Immanentize the Eschaton!