Ah! The crux of modern entertainment technology, the Home Theater PC (HTPC). While the concept has been floating around for some years with DIY and commercial kits widely available, HTPCs are only beginning to gain some ground as a serious entertainment alternative for the living room. In a nutshell, one can probably turn almost any PC into a HTPC with an appropriate media center or playback software. However, we wanted a thoroughbred. Our HTPC must be a fully featured media hub for all of today's entertainment needs and be powerful enough to see us through when high definition (HD) content hits the mainstream next year.
What we were looking for next was a small, stylish and sexy chassis that can fit inconspicuously in the living room. Most importantly, the HTPC should be silent and power efficient under operation so as not to interfere with your movie experience. When was the last time you switched-on your DVD player and it whirred to life in a cadence of cooling fans and gaudy neon lights? That's right – Never, so our HTPC shouldn't do that either.
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PowerColor X1300 PRO 256MB + Theater 550 PRO PCI Express SRP: US$120 each
The SD11G5 features and Intel's GMA900 IGP accelerator. However, that will not cut it for our HTPC needs. PowerColor seemed to have what we needed and we ended up with the perfect combo of an X1300 Pro graphic card and the Theater 550 Pro TV-tuner. The X1300 Pro would be responsible for delivering ultra-high quality video output through ATI's new AVIVIO processing technology. The PowerColor X1300 Pro supports a whole gamut of output including DVI, VIVO, S-Video, composite and HDTV interfaces.
Working hand-in-hand is the Theater 550 Pro for true media PC functionality. The TV-tuner card has a 12-bit video engine, supports TV/FM, Video/Audio, S-Video and Composite inputs. It features 3D comb filtering, noise reduction, anti-aliasing filter and time shift functionality. Best of all it already comes pre-bundled with Cyberlink's PowerCinema suite of software to get your HTPC setup right out of the box. Watch, record and even stream content, the possibilities are all right here.
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