Accessories for a Home Theater PC
To maximize your movie experience you’ll want to get a computer remote to control playback rather than using the keyboard/mouse. Remotes are cheap and a cinch to setup. We recommend the Logitech Harmony 688 (B0003QER8C). It features a LCD display to show you what you are controlling. Best of all you can set up the remote control by plugging it in to your PC and download macros to control entire home theater systems as well as your PC.
If you’re interested in recording TV shows, you’ll need to buy some extras. To get the TV signal into your computer you’ll need a TV Tuner card. This card will take in your cable signal, convert it into a digital format and store it on your computer. The better tuner cards will do the conversion on the card, meaning your CPU is saved the trouble of doing the conversion. The result is better performance and frees up your CPU to do other tasks. For this we recommend the Haupaugge PVR 150 MCE (B0006FS2IQ). This card will do the conversion on hardware and also includes software to schedule recording TV shows.
Having a TV tuner card will let you receive the TV signal, but how do you watch it? There are many options that not only let you watch TV but also allows you to schedule recording shows and lets you skip commercials automatically. One of the best for Windows is Sage TV (B0007Q9J9K). This particular bundle includes the Hauppaugge PVR 500 which has a double tuner allowing you to watch TV while recording. On Linux MythTv provides a free alternative and can also show you the weather and play emulated games as well.