Windows Media Center is an application bundled with certain editions of Windows Vista. While it can be used with a keyboard and mouse, and/or on a regular computer display, it's really intended to be used with a remote, and connected to a TV. Media Center helps to bridge all your hardware together to create a system that's the center of your home entertainment. With the right hardware, and properly set up, every bit of information that ends up on your TV screen will be through the Media Center interface. That means everything from whatever happens to be on your favorite TV station, to recorded tv shows, to ripped movies, to DVD's.

The Hardware

Depending on what you want out of your system, the price for the hardware can get pretty steep. You can buy Media Center PC's, but depending on how much power you want to get out of the system, you may very well have to build your own.

The first thing you need is obviously a system capable of running Windows Vista. For smooth playback, I'd recommend a Dual Core processor. I originally tried it on an Athlon XP system and it was painfully slow with a lot of periodic freezes. Changed to a dual core system, and it had a much easier time keeping up. I actually got away with only 512MB of RAM. 1GB would be desirable, but really if you're not alt-tabbing, multi-tasking, etc, you can get away with 512, since Media Center is presumably the only program you'll be running. You'll probably want a video card with at least DVI output, and then you'll need a DVI-to-HDMI cable to connect it to your TV. Alternately if you have a VGA input on your TV, you could get a video card with the VGA output, but the quality will suffer. If you plan to watch or record TV through the Media Center PC, you'll be in the market for a TV tuner card. Media Center supports many of them, and you'll have to check around and buy based on both quality and features. They're not all the same. For example, some won't accept digital signals from a digital cable or over-the-air signal. Quality can vary drastically and it's worth doing some reasearch before you buy. Sound can be tricky. Some TV's have a "PC input" or something similar for sound that uses a 3.5mm jack. You basically just connect your speaker/line output to it via a cheap cable. If you're looking for something better, the next easiest thing to go to is an optical out to go to your receiver. Many motherboards now have optical out built-in. If not, you'll have to start looking for a sound card that's got one. There's also the option to go with RCA-style audio to either the TV or a reciever, but again you've usually got to find a sound card that's got the adapter to do it. Finally, a DVD or Blue Ray drive, a hard drive, and you're probably set to go.

The Remote

There's a Media Center remote. If you didn't recieve one with your system, you can usually buy OEM ones. It's pretty essential, and comes with a USB IR receiver as well as a couple other goodies for controlling other set top boxes. There are a lot of buttons, but if you get lost somewhere in a menu along the way, there's a big green button in the middle that will always take you back to the start. You can program the volume and TV power buttons on the remote as well. If you bought OEM you probably don't have instructions, so you can find some here or download them here.