Receiver Upgrade
Upgrade to a Home TheaterJoel Santo Domingo
As you hear more buzz about convergence, you find yourself itching to hook up your new wide-screen plasma TV to your PC. No longer are you content to wrestle with your VCR to record your favorite shows; you'd much rather have a TiVo-like personal video recorder that can handle it for you. And when those episodes are securely saved on your hard drive, you'll want to burn just your favorites to DVD for later viewing or sharing with friends. The real question is how to do all this with a two-year-old desktop computer.
Booster Upgrades
Like general-purpose PC users, those who dream of upgrading their PCs to home theater systems should start with a memory upgrade—to at least 512MB—and a hard drive upgrade.
When large drives hit the market, they usually start off at 5,400 rpm instead of the faster 7,200 rpm. This works out well for home theater setups, because 5,400-rpm units run cooler and quieter yet are still fast enough for PVR functions. A 250GB, 5,400-rpm ATA hard drive like the Maxtor DiamondMax 16 ($250) is a good start for most home theater newbies.
If you think 250GB sounds a bit excessive, you're underestimating how quickly a home theater system can fill up hard drive space. PVR programs usually generate MPEG-2 files, which eat up about 2GB for every hour of recorded video. (You can also record at lower bit rates for smaller files, which is similar to recording in EP mode on a VCR. Video quality will suffer, but you can record more on your hard drive.)
Once the memory and hard drive are upgraded, you'll need to install a TV tuner card. This gives your PC the ability to receive, display, and ultimately record off your antenna or cable feed. TV tuners are available in both AGP and PCI versions. If your PC doesn't have an AGP slot, or if you want to keep your existing video card, buy a PCI TV tuner card like the Hauppauge PVR-250 ($149).
If you'd like to update your graphics card—and you'll have to if it lacks a video output—go with an AGP or PCI TV tuner card with video-out capability, such as the ATI All-In-Wonder series (model 9000, $169; 9600 Pro, $249; 9800 Pro, $449) or the Hauppauge PVR-350 ($199).
Make It Snappy
Both the ATI All-In-Wonder and the Hauppauge PVR cards come with basic PVR apps, which have limited capabilities. Gemstar Guide Plus+ EPG, an electronic programming guide that ATI uses, is a standalone program that is not as well integrated with ATI's PVR program as SnapStream.Net is with SnapStream Personal Video Station 3.3 ($79), also available for $199 bundled with the Hauppauge PVR-250 video card.
SnapStream PVS stands out among its competition, because it's the only PVR program on the market that runs its own electronic program guide, SnapStream.Net, a Web-based system that lets you pick programs to record. You can log on to the site from any system with an Internet connection—or even a WAP-enabled mobile phone or wireless PDA—and set your PC to check for new programs at any time, from anywhere.
SnapStream PVS can automatically re-encode your recorded MPEG-2 videos to WMV (Windows Media) or DiVX format, which shrinks the video files so they can be transferred to your notebook, viewed on a Pocket PC device, or streamed across your wireless network using SnapStream PVS's built-in Web server. The application can run with most TV tuner cards, including the ATI TV Wonder, but in testing, SnapStream PVS 3.3 worked best with the Hauppauge card.
Editor's Note: Snapstream announced after our print date that the new version of their Personal Video Station (PVS) software, starting with version 3.4, will be known as "BeyondTV". BeyondTV 3.4 is a free upgrade for PVS 3.x users.
Other Goodies
You can make your home theater PC experience even more enjoyable by including some extras. A sound card like the Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS ($99 to $250, depending on the number of audio connectors) can pump 5.1-channel surround sound through your home theater's AV receiver and speakers. Or, you can hook up a 5.1 speaker set like the Logitech Z-680 ($400 street) directly to the Audigy 2.
To make the 10-foot interface viewable from across a room, connect your home entertainment PC directly to your TV set. Or, if it's in your home office, consider investing in a 19-inch or larger CRT ($150 and up). CRTs can keep up with the motion found in sports programs and action movies better than LCDs, though some of the more expensive 19-inch LCD panels (which can run over $700) are video-capable. Look for a 25-ms or lower pixel response time from any LCD you plan to watch video on.
To burn TV shows to DVD—and for off-loading content from your hard drive—a dual-format DVD writer like the Memorex Dual Format DVD Recorder ($229) is a good choice.
Store-Bought Alternatives
If all of this sounds like too much work—and if money is not a problem—consider buying a new PC that includes Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (starting at around $1,000), like the ones reviewed on page 42. Windows XP MCE can be purchased only as part of a complete system; there is no upgrade version. The advantage is that since you're buying a new system, you'll get all the bells and whistles your two-year-old system lacks, like more memory and hard drive space.
Another alternative is to buy a standalone PVR that doesn't require a PC, like TiVo or ReplayTV (from $199 to more than $1,500; EPG subscription, $12.95 a month or $299 for a lifetime subscription). Standalone devices work very well with your TV set, but only the highest-end models let you burn programs to DVD.
Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in PC Magazine.