Computers & Electronics

Upgrading an HTPC

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  • Nov 4th, 2010 3:22 pm
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Member
Jan 21, 2007
296 posts
10 upvotes

Upgrading an HTPC

I see people selling their existing HTPC capable of playing 1080P to move to something else, but what are they upgrading to? Is it just more RAM, bigger/faster HD or is it about capabilities, 3D HTPC for example?
5 replies
Deal Expert
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Feb 24, 2003
22155 posts
10318 upvotes
Toronto
Perhaps people are upgrading to run Win7 with mutiple tv tuners for OTA HD, bistream HD audio from BDs, want something smaller or something quieter.
Banned
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Jun 15, 2006
517 posts
265 upvotes
Mississauga
Amourek wrote: Often people upgrade for no reason at all.
Haha too true. I found the benefit of having a HTPC was that I could replace or add any part as necessary without changing the whole thing. I just upgraded mine to an SSD. What a difference for running media center!
Deal Guru
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Apr 4, 2001
11802 posts
620 upvotes
The last time I upgraded mine, it was for power consumption reasons. The resulting system cut my HTPC power costs significantly.

But, still, I probably won't recoup the amount spent on the upgrade in terms of power savings for 5 years and, by that time, it might be time for another upgrade and there will be significantly more efficient equipment available :)
Deal Fanatic
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Nov 7, 2006
7523 posts
460 upvotes
Toronto
The only HTPC I still use is the Kitchen PC which is also the server.

The main reason I still use it is because the 27" LCD in the kitchen does not have ATSC tuner. The Kitchen PC has dual ATSC tuner so we can watch something with Window Media Center.

In the basement home theater setting, WDTV Live and Patriot Office are working great and the HTPC in the basement has been on hibernation for weeks. I only use it for the odd movies (like my rips from my BD discs) with lossless audio because the ATI 5450 can do it.

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