New software and cheaper hardware make a compelling case for the PC as entertainment device. But should you buy one or build your own?
The computer industry has been trying to sneak its way into the home theater since 2002. That’s when Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center, a version of the company’s media player with a “10-foot” user interface—large type and simplified menus that could be read and operated easily from couch distance.
Apple followed in 2005 with Front Row, a Jobsian take on the 10-foot UI that was also used in the Apple TV. The computer-as-entertainment-device idea was compelling to technophiles (after all, people were already migrating massive amounts of music to their PCs), but it was a hard idea for most people to swallow back then. Dedicating a powerful, $1000-plus computer solely to TV duty was fine for the super-enthusiast, but computers at the time had few options for video (don’t I already have a DVD player?), plus cable boxes and DVRs were becoming more computer-like anyway, so the computer as video recorder was an awkward fit.
What a difference a few years can make. The price of a new computer has plunged so that a few hundred dollars is all that’s required to get up and running. Also, there has been an explosion of video content available online, and a full-fledged computer is the easiest way to get it to your HDTV.
But what do you really get for the money if you go out and buy a media PC? Besides, even if you want such a machine, how hard could it be to just build one yourself—getting more performance for the same investment? We’ve been wondering about this recently, so we tried it both ways, creating our own media-ready computer, and then slapping down some plastic to acquire one ready-made.
How affordable? Well, at press time, the entry-level Acer AspireRevo 1600 was selling for as little as $200. But it’s not really a bargain—the 1600 is a poor excuse for a computer, with only 1 GB of RAM, a single-core CPU and Windows XP as its operating system. We wanted cheap, but not that cheap, so we opted for the AspireRevo 3610, which sells for as little as $330. The 3610 doubles the RAM to 2 GB, has a dual-core Atom processor, integrated Wi-Fi, a wireless mouse and keyboard and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Additionally, its slim white frame is peppered with ports—eSATA, a four-in-one card reader, six USBs, headphone and microphone jacks, an optical audio output and, of course, HDMI—for maximum connectivity.
Could we do better by building our own machine? We started by matching the Acer’s main components. We found a $180 Zotac motherboard with the same Atom 330 chip and Ion GPU found in the off-the-shelf computer. Add in a Seagate 160 GB drive ($38), 2 GB of discount Rendition RAM ($40), an Athenatech ITX form-factor case with integrated power supply ($30) and a copy of Windows Home Premium ($110), and we had essentially the same computer as the Acer AspireRevo 3610, only bigger, uglier and $68 more expensive.
Okay, that didn’t seem worth it at all, so we tried again with the intention of making a truly better home theater computer. This time, we kept the Zotac board, put it in a far nicer SilverStone Sugo SG05-B mini-ITX case, beefed up the hard drive to a 7200-rpm 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue, doubled the memory with 4 GB of G.Skill RAM, and then blew the budget all to hell with a Panasonic slot-load Blu-ray drive. Total price: $742—more than double the AspireRevo 3610’s.
At least it didn’t cost much in terms of human effort. Building these small mini-ITX rigs is a far simpler affair than their larger ATX counterparts. Since the CPU, heat sink and GPU are all pre-mounted to the motherboard, most of the hard work is done for you. Everything can be assembled with a single screwdriver within 10 minutes. The longest stretch of the project was the half-hour we spent staring at the screen watching Windows install.
But, to step back for a moment, who cares about computing performance? The point of these machines is to play and stream HD video on a big, glorious TV screen. And both computers did a marvelous job playing movie files, including challenging 15 GB, high-bitrate .mkv files, which essentially are Blu-ray-quality compressed video. However, both machines also choked and sputtered occasionally when streaming HD video from hulu.com. Apparently the Flash-based online site presents another insurmountable strain to the Atom CPU, and the GPU can’t seem to pick up the slack.
Our rig certainly beats the Acer when it comes to playing Blu-ray discs, since the AspireRevo comes with no disc drive at all. But just as we started tapping our feet to a little victory dance, we found that newegg.com sells an Asus external Blu-ray drive for $150, which would bring that functionality to the AspireRevo and still cost $262 less than our creation. Nuts!
It’s worth noting, however, that Blu-ray players aren’t just a plug-and-play proposition for any home theater rig. For the time being, Blu-ray discs don’t play natively in Windows (although it is rumored that this might change). So you’ll need software such as Corel’s WinDVD or CyberLink PowerDVD 10. Expect to pay at least $50.
There’s also another potential video hang-up to prepare for. The codecs (plug-in software used by video playback programs such as Quicktime and Windows Media Player to decode media files) required to play many video formats aren’t natively built into Windows. You can download them one by one, or you can save yourself a lot of searching by downloading the free K-Lite Codec Pack from download.com.
When it comes to the core functionality of an entertainment PC, both computers did an equally admirable job of playing stutter-free video, streaming Netflix movies and pumping out music through our home theater system.
Whatever route you take, we strongly suggest a few modifications: First, don’t rely upon a mouse and keyboard (even if they’re wireless) to control your television PC. Spring for a Media Center remote control. You can get a cheap one for under $25, or you can buy the Star Trek–style Lenovo Multimedia Keyboard and Remote übercontroller for $60. These remotes are completely plug-and-play and require no software. And they make the Media Center’s 10-foot UI a far more browsable experience.
Which brings us to one final suggestion. Don’t use Windows Media Center at all. Instead, install either XBMC or Boxee. Both software suites, which are free to download, search your local drive and network for media, then display it in an easy-to-search way. Boxee, which is built on the XBMC framework, also reaches out to video and audio “channels” on the Web. XBMC in its native format is more flexible and customizable, but Boxee gets major points for ease of use. Both are light-years better than the Windows-native media UI.
1. For a home theater PC, start with a small motherboard with an HDMI output. Many mini-ITX-format boards come with the processors pre-installed, which cuts down prep work. Just snap in memory modules and the board is ready for the case.
2. If your case comes with an internal power supply (as opposed to an external power brick), make sure it has a fan for extra cooling. Screw your motherboard into the case before locking down other components.
3. DIY cases allow you to be flexible about what components you use. We built in a slot-load Blu-ray player and a 500 GB hard drive.
Not interested in having a PC in your living room but still want to play video files on your TV? Try these pint-size players instead. The Western Digital WD TV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater are far friendlier to the wallet than even the cheapest computers and can stream video content either over a network or directly off a USB-connected hard drive. The software and most video codecs are built in, and these devices plug directly into your HDTV or home theater via HDMI. In our tests, both devices played every format we could throw at them, displaying stutter-free, high-quality HD video. The onscreen menus—browsable via remote control—are a bit clunky, but serviceable. While not a replacement for a computer (they have limited access to Web content), these are a cheap and easy alternative if you just want to play video files.
The computer industry has been trying to sneak its way into the home theater since 2002. That’s when Microsoft first introduced Windows Media Center, a version of the company’s media player with a “10-foot” user interface—large type and simplified menus that could be read and operated easily from couch distance.
Apple followed in 2005 with Front Row, a Jobsian take on the 10-foot UI that was also used in the Apple TV. The computer-as-entertainment-device idea was compelling to technophiles (after all, people were already migrating massive amounts of music to their PCs), but it was a hard idea for most people to swallow back then. Dedicating a powerful, $1000-plus computer solely to TV duty was fine for the super-enthusiast, but computers at the time had few options for video (don’t I already have a DVD player?), plus cable boxes and DVRs were becoming more computer-like anyway, so the computer as video recorder was an awkward fit.
What a difference a few years can make. The price of a new computer has plunged so that a few hundred dollars is all that’s required to get up and running. Also, there has been an explosion of video content available online, and a full-fledged computer is the easiest way to get it to your HDTV.
But what do you really get for the money if you go out and buy a media PC? Besides, even if you want such a machine, how hard could it be to just build one yourself—getting more performance for the same investment? We’ve been wondering about this recently, so we tried it both ways, creating our own media-ready computer, and then slapping down some plastic to acquire one ready-made.
Comparing Costs
The innovation that has enabled dirt-cheap PCs is the dirt-cheap processor. With the ascendancy of the netbook in the past few years, chipmakers have rolled out hyper-efficient, low-cost pro- cessors such as Intel’s Atom series that are good for everyday Web browsing and other common computing tasks. Those bargain CPUs aren’t so good at rendering video, however, which is why many low-cost computers now add an Nvidia Ion graphics processor, which can output 1080p video. That Atom-Ion combo has begun to show up in “nettop” computers as well, which are small, relatively cheap boxes that plug into a TV through an HDMI interface. These are home theater PCs in a cute, new and far more affordable package.How affordable? Well, at press time, the entry-level Acer AspireRevo 1600 was selling for as little as $200. But it’s not really a bargain—the 1600 is a poor excuse for a computer, with only 1 GB of RAM, a single-core CPU and Windows XP as its operating system. We wanted cheap, but not that cheap, so we opted for the AspireRevo 3610, which sells for as little as $330. The 3610 doubles the RAM to 2 GB, has a dual-core Atom processor, integrated Wi-Fi, a wireless mouse and keyboard and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Additionally, its slim white frame is peppered with ports—eSATA, a four-in-one card reader, six USBs, headphone and microphone jacks, an optical audio output and, of course, HDMI—for maximum connectivity.
Could we do better by building our own machine? We started by matching the Acer’s main components. We found a $180 Zotac motherboard with the same Atom 330 chip and Ion GPU found in the off-the-shelf computer. Add in a Seagate 160 GB drive ($38), 2 GB of discount Rendition RAM ($40), an Athenatech ITX form-factor case with integrated power supply ($30) and a copy of Windows Home Premium ($110), and we had essentially the same computer as the Acer AspireRevo 3610, only bigger, uglier and $68 more expensive.
Okay, that didn’t seem worth it at all, so we tried again with the intention of making a truly better home theater computer. This time, we kept the Zotac board, put it in a far nicer SilverStone Sugo SG05-B mini-ITX case, beefed up the hard drive to a 7200-rpm 500 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue, doubled the memory with 4 GB of G.Skill RAM, and then blew the budget all to hell with a Panasonic slot-load Blu-ray drive. Total price: $742—more than double the AspireRevo 3610’s.
At least it didn’t cost much in terms of human effort. Building these small mini-ITX rigs is a far simpler affair than their larger ATX counterparts. Since the CPU, heat sink and GPU are all pre-mounted to the motherboard, most of the hard work is done for you. Everything can be assembled with a single screwdriver within 10 minutes. The longest stretch of the project was the half-hour we spent staring at the screen watching Windows install.
Performance Showdown
So did our extra horsepower make a difference? It certainly made the operating system work faster. The zippy drive and extra RAM in our home-built rig gave Windows speedier boot times and made basic performance snappier and more responsive, but none of our improvements could help with tasks that strain the Atom processor. Installing software, for example, was a slow and creaky proposition.But, to step back for a moment, who cares about computing performance? The point of these machines is to play and stream HD video on a big, glorious TV screen. And both computers did a marvelous job playing movie files, including challenging 15 GB, high-bitrate .mkv files, which essentially are Blu-ray-quality compressed video. However, both machines also choked and sputtered occasionally when streaming HD video from hulu.com. Apparently the Flash-based online site presents another insurmountable strain to the Atom CPU, and the GPU can’t seem to pick up the slack.
Our rig certainly beats the Acer when it comes to playing Blu-ray discs, since the AspireRevo comes with no disc drive at all. But just as we started tapping our feet to a little victory dance, we found that newegg.com sells an Asus external Blu-ray drive for $150, which would bring that functionality to the AspireRevo and still cost $262 less than our creation. Nuts!
It’s worth noting, however, that Blu-ray players aren’t just a plug-and-play proposition for any home theater rig. For the time being, Blu-ray discs don’t play natively in Windows (although it is rumored that this might change). So you’ll need software such as Corel’s WinDVD or CyberLink PowerDVD 10. Expect to pay at least $50.
There’s also another potential video hang-up to prepare for. The codecs (plug-in software used by video playback programs such as Quicktime and Windows Media Player to decode media files) required to play many video formats aren’t natively built into Windows. You can download them one by one, or you can save yourself a lot of searching by downloading the free K-Lite Codec Pack from download.com.
Was It Worth It?
We’re tinkerers, but we have to admit it’s pretty hard to make the case for building your own home theater PC. Our build has space for extra drives and a separate graphics card if we wanted to do gaming, but that would certainly strain the low-powered CPU. Plus, anyone looking for storage capacity beyond the AspireRevo‘s 160 GB drive can always plug in an external drive.When it comes to the core functionality of an entertainment PC, both computers did an equally admirable job of playing stutter-free video, streaming Netflix movies and pumping out music through our home theater system.
Whatever route you take, we strongly suggest a few modifications: First, don’t rely upon a mouse and keyboard (even if they’re wireless) to control your television PC. Spring for a Media Center remote control. You can get a cheap one for under $25, or you can buy the Star Trek–style Lenovo Multimedia Keyboard and Remote übercontroller for $60. These remotes are completely plug-and-play and require no software. And they make the Media Center’s 10-foot UI a far more browsable experience.
Which brings us to one final suggestion. Don’t use Windows Media Center at all. Instead, install either XBMC or Boxee. Both software suites, which are free to download, search your local drive and network for media, then display it in an easy-to-search way. Boxee, which is built on the XBMC framework, also reaches out to video and audio “channels” on the Web. XBMC in its native format is more flexible and customizable, but Boxee gets major points for ease of use. Both are light-years better than the Windows-native media UI.
The 10-Minute PC Project
Home Theater PC Without the PC
Not interested in having a PC in your living room but still want to play video files on your TV? Try these pint-size players instead. The Western Digital WD TV Live and Seagate FreeAgent Theater are far friendlier to the wallet than even the cheapest computers and can stream video content either over a network or directly off a USB-connected hard drive. The software and most video codecs are built in, and these devices plug directly into your HDTV or home theater via HDMI. In our tests, both devices played every format we could throw at them, displaying stutter-free, high-quality HD video. The onscreen menus—browsable via remote control—are a bit clunky, but serviceable. While not a replacement for a computer (they have limited access to Web content), these are a cheap and easy alternative if you just want to play video files.
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