Can a Home Theater PC (HTPC) help save money on my cable TV bill?

A HTPC, also known as a media center, is your one stop shop for replacing your premium cable TV programming. It is a computer that is equipped with additional software or hardware that supports your media viewing or listening. These PCs have larger hard drives, dedicated video cards that output to your HDTV and special software that will allow you to stream content to your TV or serve any other device on your network. The greatest benefit is that you have access to the widest variety of content; anything you can get on your home computer you can watch on your HTPC. Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, all of the broadcast networks websites would be available to you. You won't have to worry about content being blocked to your device like Google TV. The greatest downside is that also that it is a computer. You will have to do some setup to get the PC to work just the way you want to. While these days it is very easy to plug a PC to a HDTV, configuring the PC is another story. If you're savvy about the technology, you can build your HTPC yourself. This ZDnet article explains how.