HTPC for TV? Why?

Personally use a Logitech Harmony one with Sky box, Blu Ray Player, TV, AV Receiver and my Windows 7 HTPC. As above it'll turn everyone one and set it to the relevant input.

The HTPC control is perfect with Media Portal and will power up and shut down to cold with the Harmony. Can't even remember when I last needed one of the original remotes. Setting up is a doddle with Logitechs software too.
 
Because I don't have a console, and never intend on having one.

I control it via a logitech remote which has macros enabled to switch everything I need on. Makes it easier to watch tv series, link to iplayer and youtube, and catalogue my music. The HTPC has plex running on it too, so that I can watch stuff when away from home which is handy. It plays every format, and is customisable to be the way I want it to be. :)
 
alx said:
Are they pretty easy to set up?
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Yep, takes half an hour or so depending on how many devices you have and once its done you never touch it again until you add/remove/change a device, and how often do you do that? :)
 
My harmony isn't used anymore. It was good but it doesn't intelligently know the status of each component. Thus the Mrs would point it backwards and get it all out of sync.

CEC though has been flawless. We only use the TV remote now for TV, Av reciever, HTPC Kodi, Chromecast and to some extent the PS4.

CEC knows the state of each item so cannot get out of sync. My HTPC wakes up if I switch to it and sleeps when I turn my TV off, same as the Av reciever etc
 
My HTPC is also my file server and sits there acquiring stuff from the Internet, running Plex and a few others and sharing out round my house. Useful for things like YouTube when mates home round, etc.
 
Wahzy said:
Hi guys,

I read the forums daily and it seems really popular having a small HTPC type PC under the TV. For streaming, playing movies etc. I am just asking what other reasons do you have one in your lounge?

I personally have an Xbox One and stream YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, and game from it. I suppose it's similar.

I was curious that's all,

Alex
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I've had a HTPC for years now, a mixture of hand me downs from my main system and other parts.

Used pretty much just like a PC to be honest, video, gaming, internet, music, encoding, downloading/uploading, printing and viewing documents.

It's just more useful than my PS4 which is just collecting dust.
 
I tend to rent blurays via Lovefilm and store to watch later. After trying a few devices, a NUC has a HTPC for playback is also just the cover all the bases / simplest solution.

- Rips, stores and plays uncompressed bluray files without a hitch with full HD audio streams
- Plex server
- Mini file server, runs automated backups of my files.
- Kodi, Youtube, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon playbak
- Full fledged browser with power to play all Youtube HD streams
- Some 4K future proofing although that isn't a huge driver
- Emulators

For all of the above and being hassle free and powerful I found it the best option.
 
for a media server client in the living room in order of preference

Smart TV client - No additional calbes/power/remotes required, most transcoding avoided on newer models.
Roku/CHromeCast/AppleTV - low footprint, low cost, some transcoding avoided.
HTPC - very compatable/highest performance/potential higher quality if bandwidth/medium server is limited, no transcoding required but probably bulkier/noisier
Console - more limited compatibility, transcoding imapct on media server, limited interface, likely dlna only client.

console is worst of all for media server playback, but a good option if you already have one and nothing else.
 
FerretBoy said:
My harmony isn't used anymore. It was good but it doesn't intelligently know the status of each component. Thus the Mrs would point it backwards and get it all out of sync.

CEC though has been flawless. We only use the TV remote now for TV, Av reciever, HTPC Kodi, Chromecast and to some extent the PS4.

CEC knows the state of each item so cannot get out of sync. My HTPC wakes up if I switch to it and sleeps when I turn my TV off, same as the Av reciever etc
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I was looking at CEC - have you got more details of your set up?
 
Sure for the htpc (nuc) I use a pulse-eight Nuc cec adapter.

Other devices I just enabled cec. Have to say my Sony TV had an extended option so almost every button works over cec. My Samsung TV is a little more limited. But I used a remote.xml file in kodi to let me remap the return and colour keys.
 
I use mine for pretty much all media consumption feeding devices throughout the house and to my inlaws in Malta who want access to local broadcast TV.
I can access transcoded live tv/films/tvseries anywhere in the world, it also upscales far better than the inbuilt unit as well as running SVP.

In the background it also runs a VM for the acquiring and remote desktop for local machine management.

All in all its a pretty awesome front end for tv which is wife and kid friendly. no keyboard or mouse just a remote. And no need for about 5 other devices attached to the tv.

Tempted to get steam stream up and running as well but there's no good integration with Media Portal yet i don't think.
 
I started out with a HTPC. Plex, general media store. But its grown into something else. It now stores backups of every other machine in the house. Phone backups too. Every audio cd we have, every dvd, bluray. Opened, ripped, put away in a box. Everything in one place indexed. Smart TV's in 5 rooms all link to the one media box. Local traffic instead of internet traffic. 2 teenagers at home clock up enough net traffic as it is! :-) The box also grew from a tiny ITX to a M-ATX with more and more drives, oh and a 960GTX as a recent addition to game on it too.
 
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