The Home Theater PC

DVD and CD Playback
This is the most obvious use for a PC in the living room, and provides an excellent example of the kinds of problems you'll have to deal with in any other living room PC application. While you may already have a CD or DVD-ROM installed in your PC, you'll need more. Even for an application as simple as CD playback, you may find that your PC sound card's audio quality isn't quite what you'd like. And if you want to play DVDs, you'll need some way to generate video signals that you can display on your TV. Let's look at some of the other issues you'll face when installing the PC as an integral part of your home entertainment system. It is important to consider that the PC is going to give you a user interface that is quite unlike the front panel of a CD or DVD player. You can run the show with a remote keyboard and mouse, or even a programmable remote, but the look and feel of a PC will remain.

The next thing to consider is potential sound problems. While the sounds your PC software makes on the desktop can be both entertaining and a good source of feedback, they can cause problems in your home entertainment system. Many of these sounds will play back very loudly through an audio system. Consider disabling all such audio on the living room PC, but if you like such things, pick your sounds carefully.

Finally, don't forget to use a screen saver. Many TVs have picture tubes that may burn more easily than computer monitors do.

Create and Backup Audio CDs
With a CD-RW drive in your living room PC, you can backup your audio CDs or create custom CDs with compilations of your favorite music. Naturally, you can do the same thing on the desktop, but it's more fun from the comfort of your easy chair.

We've all recognized by now that CDs don't deliver perfect sound forever. They get banged around, scratched up, and sometimes start to skip or become unplayable for non-apparent reasons. Now we can make bit-for-bit copies of CDs, and don't have to worry about such things. We can make a copy for daily use and store the original for the day when the copy has problems. Another great use for the living room PC is to create an MP3 jukebox with hundreds of songs copied from your CD collection.

It doesn't stop there either. You can transfer all your old vinyl record albums to CD, and use the PC to clean up the background noise.

Surf the Web
Once you have video on your big TV screen and a remote keyboard in your lap, it's natural to think about surfing the Web. Just set up your Web browser of choice and you can surf from the comfort of your easy chair. And in the living room, the whole family can take part.

If your TV has a picture-in-picture capability, or you have both a computer monitor and a TV connected to your PC, you can simulsurf as well. When you're watching a live show that accepts real-time e-mail, you're ready to participate, and the setup is perfect for the two-screen interactive TV programs that are all the rage.

Naturally, once on the Web, you're going to want to access streaming video and audio. A broadband connection is best here. But the quality of streamed media won't match what you can get by downloading instead of streaming.

Downloading Audio and Video
The problem with using streaming media in the living room is compression, which substantially limits quality. While good enough for small video windows on the desktop, it's not meant for display on a big TV, played through a high fidelity audio system. Streaming media is compressed for real-time delivery, within the available bandwidth. Downloading allows any file size to be transferred, so audio and video compression isn't essential, but is usually desirable. It takes time to download higher quality media files and a big disk drive, but the resulting quality has no limits.

Full screen 30fps MPEG-4 provides near-VHS quality, as well as reasonable download times. With a 56KB modem, it took us 20 minutes to download the Shreck trailer. With a DSL connection, it took about six minutes. DSL users have reported downloading entire movies in as little as 30 minutes. And remember, download speed doesn't affect playback quality.

Your Personal Video Recorder
Modest quality Web video won't replace the over-the-air cable and satellite sources we're already using in our home entertainment systems until there is enough bandwidth for full resolution audio and video streaming. But this doesn't make the PC useless with higher quality sources. With a PVR card or a compatible video capture card and software you can make your viewing smarter. You can access Electronic Program Guides (EPG) and schedule programs to record for later viewing. With a PVR card, you can pause live TV, enjoy instant replays and do all the cool things that stand-alone PVRs do.

Edit Digital Photos and Home Videos
With a video capture or FireWire card and editing software you can edit your home videos by cutting out the boring parts, adding music, narrating voice-overs, inserting transitions and creating special effects. Many people find this particular activity quite addictive, and it can become a hobby unto itself.

Technical Details - Getting the Audio and Video Out
One of the most important things to get right in your living room PC is the video output. Fortunately, it's not hard to get quality video from the PC. If you have an HDTV projector or other computer-compatible display, a high-end video card like the ATI Radion DDR is in order. But if you're like most of us, you can get by with something more modest. There are two choices available. You can install a video card with high quality NTSC video-out, or you can use an external scan converter.

I'm Convinced - Where Do I Begin?
There are countless ways to integrate a PC into your home entertainment system. Consider using a large VGA monitor or projector instead of a TV. You can feed all your video sources through the PC and use the computer-grade display for all your viewing. A good, high-resolution monitor or projector will get you ready for HDTV. Or, you can use a switchable TV/VGA monitor so you don't have to run everything through your PC. You'll still be ready for HDTV, DTV, and other enhanced forms of video. A DVD player with RGB outputs and a computer-grade projector produces an image that's hard to beat. Or, you can simply connect a scan converter to the video card already in the PC or install a video card with NTSC outputs. There is no best way: It all depends on what you have now and what you want to accomplish.

Consider all the available options. You can add tuner cards, including ATVEF-compliant tuners. You can distribute audio and video throughout the house on your wired or wireless home network. And why restrict the living room PC to the rack with the other home theater electronics? How about putting it on a coffee table right in front of the couch for easy access and control. It's hard to imagine anything more convenient, but there are people working to make things even easier.

The Future of the Living Room PC
Leading edge convergence products like the ZapStation signal the emergence of the dedicated living room PC that may replace set-top boxes. We've already seen PVRs incorporated into set-top boxes, like satellite receivers, and this consolidation is likely to continue. To get an idea of the future set-top box, we talked with Aletha Walther and Kevin Mosher of Applied Magic. Applied Magic currently markets stand-alone video workstations, but it has much bigger plans for the future; and the promise is phenomenal. It sees a future where the set-top-box/PC will serve many purposes. Broadband Internet access, video-on-demand, and even software-on-demand are all integral parts of this future. Applied Magic has a vision of the future in which the set-top box will handle what they call "lean-back" applications to distinguish them from the "lean-forward" computer applications, like word processors and spread sheets. The "lean-back" application software is expected to be available on-demand. Instead of spending several hundred dollars on an expensive video-editing software package, for example, you'll be able to use the same high caliber goodies on a pay-per-use basis. And it is expected to have ease-of-use similar to today's WebTV and PVRs, because each application downloaded will customize the set-top box for a specific function. We may see such set-top boxes included in our cable or satellite receivers just as we now see PVRs appearing in them. After all, it only takes a software change to make the PVR perform other functions.

Less is More
One of the most appealing things about the idea of a generalized set-top box or a conventional PC in the living room is that you can reduce the number of boxes and interconnects in your home entertainment system. Fewer boxes, fewer remotes, fewer problems and more capabilities. Whether you choose a turnkey solution like the ZapStation, a pre-configured home theater PC, or decide to do it yourself, it's time to consider a PC in your living room.

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