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<blockquote data-quote="Jmac" data-source="post: 3668947" data-attributes="member: 545486">Basically, a media center PC will be connected to your television and contain all your media files (music, videos, pictures, etc.).&nbsp; It will generally be running XP MCE, Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, or one of many Linux equivalents.The thought process behind it is that it&#039;s much easier to store and access your media on a hard drive than on optical discs (CDs, DVDs, etc.).&nbsp; Instead of going through your library of DVDs, you can just access them through the media center program w/ the click of a mouse or remote.&nbsp; Also, because most of the media is stored on the hard drive, it means that you no longer have to convert and burn your music, movies, etc. that you have downloaded to optical discs in order to view them on your TV.Most media center PCs will also have at least one TV tuner for recording live television.&nbsp; Basically, making the PC a home-made TiVO, if you will.&nbsp; 1 person I know even have 4 TV tuners (2 SD, 2 HD), although you will require a very powerful computer to record/watch 4 instances at once.&nbsp; In addition, they will also at the very least have a DVD drive and many are now incorporating HD-DVD and/or BluRay drives now that they have fallen in price.Media center PCs can be fairly expensive, depending on what you&#039;re playing (i.e. SD content will run on anything that&#039;s 5 years old or newer, HD content will require much beefier hardware).&nbsp; My media center PC is basically just my old gaming machine (AthlonXP 2500+, 1 GB of RAM, GeForce 7600 GT, Windows XP MCE).&nbsp; I have 2 terabytes of NAS (network accessible storage) hooked up to it and output to my HDTV via HDMI.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jmac, post: 3668947, member: 545486"] Basically, a media center PC will be connected to your television and contain all your media files (music, videos, pictures, etc.). It will generally be running XP MCE, Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, or one of many Linux equivalents. The thought process behind it is that it's much easier to store and access your media on a hard drive than on optical discs (CDs, DVDs, etc.). Instead of going through your library of DVDs, you can just access them through the media center program w/ the click of a mouse or remote. Also, because most of the media is stored on the hard drive, it means that you no longer have to convert and burn your music, movies, etc. that you have downloaded to optical discs in order to view them on your TV. Most media center PCs will also have at least one TV tuner for recording live television. Basically, making the PC a home-made TiVO, if you will. 1 person I know even have 4 TV tuners (2 SD, 2 HD), although you will require a very powerful computer to record/watch 4 instances at once. In addition, they will also at the very least have a DVD drive and many are now incorporating HD-DVD and/or BluRay drives now that they have fallen in price. Media center PCs can be fairly expensive, depending on what you're playing (i.e. SD content will run on anything that's 5 years old or newer, HD content will require much beefier hardware). My media center PC is basically just my old gaming machine (AthlonXP 2500+, 1 GB of RAM, GeForce 7600 GT, Windows XP MCE). I have 2 terabytes of NAS (network accessible storage) hooked up to it and output to my HDTV via HDMI. [/QUOTE]

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