How To Make A Home Theater System
If you want to watch your media collection including movies, TV shows, music, pictures on your PC or big screen TV then a HTPC will make life easier, more organized and much more attractive.Plus you can also access free OTA digital TV and record content using a PC based DVR.
A HTPC (home theater PC) is a computer (or other hardware streaming device) with the correct software installed that will present a gorgeous front end for all your media files.You can run movies and other media from any old Windows machine by opening the folder and pressing play. But then you have to put up with the inconvenience of using a mouse and keyboard to control your entertainment center. But we want a nice single software application with a dedicated HTPC front-end.
This software once installed will play movies, shows and music and also bring up metadata for those files. So for example, if you have ripped a DVD such as 'The Hobbit' and saved it on your hard drive as an avi or MP4 file, the software will then automatically bring in pictures, artwork, cast details, plot, reviews etc. and present it to you on the screen. This makes organising, selecting and playing media a much nicer experience.
Hardware
You can build a HTPC using any reasonably specced PC. Important points are plenty of memory and a decent sized hard drive to store all those movies (or you can have a central harddrive and just network to it). The idea for a perfect HTPC is for it to be quiet, very quick to start-up and that it boots straight into your chosen media software.
Operating System
Any operating system is suitable for a HTPC, but for speed and quickness many make use of the Linusx OS as it loads real fast and can boot straight into your chosen media software. The XBMC software has even been combined into a streamlined Linux OS called OpenELEC (Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center) for a quick and small (125Mb) stand-alone media center OS.
For more information read our Complete HTPC guide here
The following are the best HTPC front-end programs around.

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