INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the world of technological convergence. While they were once restricted to the desktop, PCs have all the power and functionality necessary to make them a vital part of the home theater experience. They can play DVDs and Blu-rays, run video games, load streaming audio and video from the Internet, and store a tremendous amount of media.

Like their name so explicitly summarizes, home theater PCs are PCs used with a home theater system. A few years ago, they were specialized systems with very particular hardware and software configurations that made them usable with a big screen and beefy sound system. They tended to be quite expensive compared to standard desktop PCs.

The past few years have seen some great advances in computers, and thanks to a combination of greatly expanded storage and processing power, enhanced networking functions, and the spread of universal A/V connections like HDMI, you can get an off-the-shelf “desktop” computer that can serve all of your movie and music-slinging home theater needs. Nowadays you can pick up a solid system with plenty of hard drive space and a video card with HDMI (or DVI/miniDVI) for under a thousand dollars.

Of course, since so many systems have these features now, it can be a daunting task to pick out the right computer to add to your A/V rig. While home theater PCs were once limited to a handful of models scattered across a handful of brands, these days you can walk into any Best Buy or Fry’s and be greeted with dozens of choices of all sizes, shapes, and prices. Fortunately, we’re here to help.

COLLECTION

This is the real meat of it all. Once you’ve figured out exactly what computer you’re using and what codecs you’re sticking to, you can nail down what sort of interface to use.

On Windows systems, Windows Media Player is the most direct approach to storing your media. It catalogues and organizes your collection of movies and music, and handles playback of both stored media and DVDs. While it can’t support FLAC or Apple’s lossless formats out of the box, it can handle all MP3s, Windows Media Audio (WMA) lossless, and waveform (.wav) files. Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate editions also come with a feature called the Windows Media Center (MCE). It’s essentially a home theater-friendly front-end to Windows Media Player and any media you keep on it. Instead of the cumbersome windowed look, MCE fills the screen with a simple, streamlined interface that can be navigated with a remote control. If you’re using a media extender instead of a direct connection to the PC, the interface is effectively identical to MCE.

Another option is to use iTunes as the library system. iTunes can’t handle FLAC either, but it supports all MP3s, plus WAV, AAC, AIFF, and Apple’s lossless format (ALC). iTunes works with PCs, so you can use it as your preferred software and interface..

If you so desire, you can simply suspend the entire home theater interface and use a streaming music system to directly pipe your tunes into your speakers with nary a wire running to a screen. The Sonos Multi-Room Music System and Linksys Director / Wireless-N Music Player access your computer’s music library either through Wi-Fi or wired Ethernet, and they use their own interface to play it back. Both systems offer wireless remotes with color LCDs to display cover art and make library navigation easy, and they even include music receiver models with built-in 50 to 55-watt amplifiers, so you can hook up and power your own speakers without a middleman device. 

CODEC

This is where you’ll find most disagreements between audiophiles and gadget-heads. Lossless or lossy? High bitrate or low bitrate? Proprietary or open-source format? Users have dozens of format choices for storing their music.

MP3 is the most common format, and offers the most variety. An MP3 can be encoded at a variety of sampling rates, bit rates, and channels. A 4 minute and 20 second song (Mr. Jones by the Talking Heads, in this case) is only 1 MB if encoded at 22 kHz and 32 kbps in mono, but explodes to 9 MB when encoded at 48 kHz and 320 kbps in stereo.

Even at the highest quality and lowest compression settings, MP3s are always smaller than other, lossless formats. However, due to the very nature of MP3s and digital compression, they are also almost always inferior in audio quality. While the actual discernable difference is debatable at different settings, on a purely technical level MP3s have less information than lossless formats. They’re “lossy,” in that they compress and remove bits of audio information in order to save space.

One of the most popular lossless formats available is FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). It’s gained momentum as a universal, freely available format that doesn’t use any sort of copy protection. As such, online high-definition music stores like HDTracks have embraced FLAC as a format option. Unfortunately, it can’t be played on Windows Media Player or iTunes without going through some esoteric work-arounds. If you don’t want to worry about juggling codecs and interface hacks, you’ll have to use another media player like WinAmp to play FLAC files.

Windows Media Player and iTunes have their own proprietary lossless formats, Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Apple Lossless Codec (ALC). While they can be played with little to no trouble on their respective players, they aren’t quite so flexible if you want to play them on anything else. If you’re sticking with a specific set-up for lossless playback, either of these formats are functional choices that can be used with little hassle.

CONNECTION

New A/V components with HDMI pipe high-definition video and multichannel audio straight to receivers or TVs  via a single, slender cable. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work nearly as conveniently when hooking up a home theater PC. Most computers with HDMI only support video over that jack; unless the HDMI port is linked to both the graphics card and an S/PDIF header on the motherboard, it will only pipe out video.

Even if you can’t send sound over it, HDMI is one of the best choices for hooking up your computer’s video to your home theater. Many computers feature HDMI-out, and even ones that don’t will almost always offer DVI-out. A DVI-to-HDMI adapter or cable will let you plug into your TV or receiver’s HDMI port with ease.

Sound can be a bit trickier, especially if you want surround support. Virtually every computer available has a simple stereo-out mini-plug port. A mini-plug-to-RCA adapter is all you need to connect the system to your receiver. It’s a simple solution, but it only outputs stereo. That’s fine if you have a 2.1 system, but if you want to kick out the jams on 5.1 (and don’t want to rely on in-receiver faux-surround processing), you’ll need something  else.

Many sound cards support surround and feature multichannel analog outputs. Each surround channel gets its own mini-plug port, for ease of hooking up PC surround speaker kits. If you don’t mind a Gordian knot of cables connecting your PC to your home theater, a half dozen mini-plug to RCA adapters running into your receiver’s analog input is enough to pump out the 5.1 goodness. There’s a simpler way, though.

Higher end PC sound cards, like the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium series, feature TOSLink optical outputs. A single fiber optic cable is all you need for surround sound audio. These sound cards often support Dolby Digital and DTS formats, making them even more tempting if you want to use your system to play DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

If you’re using a media extender to send your media to your home theater instead of connecting a computer directly, things will probably be much simpler. Many media center extenders, including Apple TV and later model Xbox 360 systems, have fully functional (video and audio) HDMI ports that can handle sound and video.

CONTROL

When you use a computer, you usually sit at a desk with a keyboard and a mouse. There’s a nice flat surface, plenty of space to rest your wrists and move the mouse around, and everything is conveniently tethered to the system itself.

When you’re sitting on a couch and listening to music, you don’t want to juggle a keyboard and a mouse. You want to use a remote control, like the one you use to control every other piece of equipment in your home theater. Fortunately, the Vista Media Center is built to be very remote-friendly, and a compatible remote  kit (with an infrared receiver) can be found for around $30. Media-minded computers like the Gateway LX-6810 often comewith their own remote and receiver, along with an IR blaster cable for further integrating the system into your home theater.

While it makes navigating the media center quite easy, a remote control still can’t replace a mouse and keyboard. The thing generating your HTPC’s attractive interface is a computer, and that computer needs some sort of cursor control. You can tuck a mouse next to the tower and pull it out (and plunk it on a flat surface) when you need more control, but there’s a better alternative.

The Gyration Air Music Remote ($100) is my “secret weapon” for controlling a home theater PC. At first glance, it looks like a simple Vista-compatible universal remote, with all the buttons you’d need to control your media center, cable box, Blu-ray player, and other gadgets. However, a trio of buttons sit squarely in the center of the remote, sporting the Gyration logo and two icons that look suspiciously like computer mice.

Besides working like a standard remote control, the Air Music Remote also functions as an air mouse, an input device that uses special sensors to determine how it’s being moved, and then translating that movement on the screen. Hold down the center “Gyration” button (or double-tap it to lock the mode) and simply wave the remote around to move the mouse cursor. It feels a bit like the Nintendo Wii controller, but much more precise. Thanks to the air mouse aspect of the remote, you can access any part of the system from your couch with a wave of your hand, instead of having to break out a regular mouse and finding a flat surface on which to waggle it.

Better still, the remote doesn’t even need a line of sight with the system to function as a mouse. It comes with a USB dongle that lets it communicate with the computer through RF, so you don’t need to actually point it at the system to get it to work.