- Media Center PC Basic Requirements
- Do You Need Bells and Whistles?
- Takeaways
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Do You Need Bells and Whistles?
As somebody whose audio equipment is a little long in the tooth (although state of the art 10 years ago—the last time I forced myself out to go buy some new gear), it's interesting to ponder the possibility of replacing most of my current home setup with a Media Center PC. I could dump my preamplifier, lose my antique components (tape decks, phonograph, videodisk player, and so forth), and switch over to something completely new and pretty different. Once you get over the hump of digitizing your sound holdings and get them on a hard drive, a PC-based solution is pretty darned attractive. For somebody like me, spending up to a couple of thousand bucks on the brains of a brand-new home entertainment center may actually make sense.
But for those with newer gear, especially if they're happy with sound quality and display equipment, a Media Center PC may not deliver enough new capability to justify prices that start at $750. Essentially, all this really adds to most modern systems is digital video-recording capability, lots of great image display and management capability, and a killer digital music jukebox to go with one's other gear. Given that network-attached devices such as the AudioTron Home Audio System and PC Bridge sell for less than $250 and can do everything that's missing from modern entertainment systems, that kind of approach may be a better option for those simply looking to pipe digital music from their PCs to their home entertainment systems.
That said, this technology is pretty exciting and offers potential integration of things you can only do on a computer—such as play games, surf the Web, and so forth—as well as integrating digital audio and video with the family entertainment center's typical big screen display and home theater or surround-sound system. If more members of Microsoft's Media Center PC club can get the form factor (small enough to replace a typical tape deck, CD player, VCR, and so forth) and all the interconnections right, this could be a potent addition to family rooms everywhere. As things stand right now, however, it's more likely to appeal to savvy computer geeks with enough time and money on their hands to figure out how to bring all the pieces and parts together and make them work.
Table 2. Media Center PC Reviews and Related information
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Item/Title |
URL |
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PC Mag Reviews (includes Dell, HP, ViewSonic) |
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ExtremeTech: (search on Media Center PC): lots of reviews, news, and overviews |
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Paul Thurrott: Media Center Review |
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/windowsxp_mediacenter.asp |
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The Green Button: Media Center enthusiast site |