Not all home theaters are created equal. Some people prefer to design the wall treatments, seating arrangements and lighting fixtures to perfection, and forget about the good stuff: the hardware. This can lead to a lovely looking home theater from afar, but a mess of cables, slapped-together devices and a jumble of electronic excess often adorn the area immediately surrounding the LCD flat panel TV. If you’ve found yourself at a loss when you try to organize and shrink down your home theater hardware, you might want to consider a Mac Mini Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC).

The Mac Mini is a small, powerful and quiet device that will simplify your home theater with only a few cables and some easy-to-find software. It is sleek looking, so you don’t have to worry about it messing up the minimalist, modern vibe you’ve got going in your home entertainment center.

Depending on your personal tastes, you might want your Mac Mini to act as the central “brain” of your home theater. It can schedule events, control connected devices, record and play audio/video, download audio/video and much more. With support for 1080p video and surround sound, what more could you need?

Well, for one, you will likely need additional storage, especially if you are a download fiend. Before settling in with your Mac Mini, consider adding a storage unit to expand that hard drive space. You can even repurpose an older PC to become a file server, and use the Mac Mini to schedule large file downloads at night or while the home theater is empty, to save time and speed up your whole system. You’ll thank yourself later.

Another item on the “additions” checklist is some form of remote control. Because the Mac Mini is a PC, you can purchase a mouse and keyboard to easily navigate the media and PC aspects of your new setup. If you go this route, be sure to get a wireless mouse and keyboard, as there is nothing worse than having to get up in the middle of a movie to increase the volume, when you could do it right from your seat with wireless connections. And you must make sure that your Mac Mini is the Bluetooth model (as well as the wireless mouse and keyboard) for this to work. You can also purchase a remote control to work with the Mac Mini, but do your research first to find a compatible remote.

Now, the cables that you’ll need will depend on all of your devices: HDTV, sound system and the like. Using HDMI is often a good bet, so picking up some DVI to HDMI cables might not be a bad idea.

The software that comes with the Mac Mini is often enough for most of your media needs. In particular, you’ll probably be using a lot of the Front Row media software that is included with your Mac Mini. This is designed specifically for navigating media from your living room, so the features that it includes should make your life easier. For instance, you can download and watch TV and movies, listen to music, browse pictures, connect to remote networked computers and much more with Front Row.

If you have a Mac Mini, turning it into the central hub for your home theater will be a rewarding endeavor. You’ll free up space, reduce clutter and have a perfectly beautiful audio and visual experience to boot.

Lauren writes for the HD Envy blog. HD Envy produces a wide range of TV picture frame solutions for the modern home theater. With TV picture frame offerings ranging from traditional to modern, from leather upholstered to wood crafted, there is bound to be something that reflects your sense of style at HD Envy. By incorporating a TV picture frame into your home theater, you’ll experience a unique and beautiful infusion of style. And each TV picture frame is crafted using industry standards for easy installation and a long lifespan.

Your home theater can be as functional, or as simple, as you want it. You can make it a movie-dedicated area, with Full HD picture and 7.1 surround sound to reproduce Hollywood’s best, flawlessly. Or you can create a multimedia experience, offering guests access not only to movies, but also music, TV, pictures, websites and more, all from your HDTV and flat screen TV frame. For those going the more expansive route, many people choose to incorporate a home theater PC into their setup, to make a multimedia experience easier to navigate and more equipped for 21st century entertainment demands.

At its core, a home theater PC (HTPC) combines the functions of a traditional personal computer with a home theater multimedia center, offering you the video and music capabilities of a multimedia center in conjunction with computer applications such as web browsing. You can purchase HTPCs designed to function as a multimedia center, and these will often be equipped with a 10-foot or more user interface so that you can navigate via remote from your couch, as well as offering easy connectivity to an HDTV display.

Depending on how tech-savvy you are, you can go one of two routes when picking out your HTPC: you can find pre-fabricated units that come with all the bells and whistles, such as the necessary GUI to look great on a TV screen, or you can hack together your very own, custom-built entertainment monolith. Going this second route requires that you know quite a bit about hardware and software for computers, and that you understand what is required for optimizing a computer for your home theater. Common software that people turn to when creating their own HTPC includes Windows Media Center, MythTV, Freevo and LinuxMCE.

So, why do you even need a HTPC? Why not just hook up your PC to your HDTV and go from there? There are several advantages that the specially designed HTPC has over traditional PCs. Because HTPCs are designed to connect to an HDTV, they are easier to connect and often use a better connection, such as HDMI. They are also much quieter than regular PCs because they are usually less processor-intense and have optimized the cooling process to be as silent as possible. You can also connect your HTPC to a home networked hard drive, and store your media there. This will not only reduce the noise-level, but it will also extend the life of your HTPC. And one feature that the HTPC has that most PCs do not is a TV tuning card. This allows the HTPC to easily access TV signals, and many of these cards have the dual function of being a video capture card, which allows you to record TV and other visual media to your hard drive.

HTPCs have other benefits as well. You can use them as media servers, sending files to other networked devices around your home. Game lovers can enjoy any PC video game on their HTPC, and playing on the big screen is something that needs to be seen to be believed.

There are some downsides to owning a HTPC, however, as nothing is perfect. Some people find them expensive, especially when compared to renting a DVR box from a cable company, which offers many (but by no means all) of the same features. They can also consume more power than other components in a home theater, and you do have to have a bit of software knowledge to maintain all of the updates and configurations that the HTPC requires.

All-in-all, a HTPC is something of an all-in-one unit. It offers functions that would otherwise require several devices, all found in one convenient place. You will still need other devices for your home theater, such as speakers and possibly a Blu-Ray player, but the HTPC can cover a lot of the multimedia aspects of any fully equipped entertainment center.

Lauren is a contributing writer for the HD Envy blog. HD Envy produces flat screen TV frame solutions for your home theater. A flat screen TV frame will bring your home décor together and highlight your stunning HDTV. The flat screen TV frame offerings from HD Envy include several high-quality premade frames that are designed for a sophisticated touch, or you can choose to customize your own flat screen TV frame to perfectly match your home theater. If you are looking for a unique way to get that coveted home theater look found in hotels, casinos and business offices around the world, look no further than a flat screen TV frame from HD Envy.

Your HDTV with a TV Frame doesn’t have to be used only for viewing the latest Hollywood blockbusters in crystal clear HD.  You can also set up your HDTV to playback slideshows of your own photos – family gatherings, vacations, nature shots, you name it.  Your HDTV can display these photos in a slideshow that will bring out all of the colors, detail and life-like replication of each picture, and can be set on auto to play in the background while you enjoy your company.

There are several ways that you can set up your HDTV and TV Frame to display a photo slideshow.   Depending on the configuration of your home theater, you might need to purchase some extra HDMI cables or find a way to connect to your home’s internet connection.  Below are some of the most common ways that your home theater can be converted to a photo slideshow room.

Most HDTVs today have a PC-input.  This allows your computer to connect to your home theater TV, and effectively uses your flat panel TV as a monitor.  Using this connection, you can set up a slideshow to run on your PC, and watch the memories fly by in truly high definition on the big screen.   You can connect your PC to the HDTV with an HDMI cable (recommended), or a DVI or analog VGA cable.  Once the connection has been established, you can set the HDTV to be the main monitor or a secondary monitor.   Whichever you choose, you are going to have to configure your photo slideshow software to run in the window that is visible on the HDTV and TV frame, and voila! – the slideshow begins.

But you’re probably wondering now about that photo slideshow software we mentioned.   If you do a quick search online, you should find dozens of recommended software to present your photos in a slideshow setting.  Some allow for effects between each photo, music and voice recording, timers, text and much more.  Be sure to only download a program that you trust, and do a scan to ensure that it is virus-free.  Or, if you prefer, you can use the built-in photo software that comes with most Windows or Mac software.  Some of these programs will require that you burn your photo slideshow presentation to a DVD or CD and play it from your PC’s disc drive, while others will allow you to save it to your hard drive and play it from there.

If hooking up your PC sounds like a drag, you have other options for enjoying a photo slideshow  in your home theater.   Set top boxes like TiVo allow you to easily run a slideshow without additional effort once the box is installed.  For a TiVo slideshow, you will need to have your TiVo box connected to a networked PC.   To establish this network connection, you may either plug a wired Ethernet cable into the back of your TiVo DVR, or use the TiVo wireless adaptor to establish a wireless connection.  Once this is done, you simply navigate the TiVo menu on your HDTV to “Share Music, Photos, & Video”, and select the photos or photo files on your PC.  This will connect the TiVo player to these photos.  Then, you must highlight the photos you want in the slideshow and choose “Play”, easy as pie!

Some Blu-Ray players have built-in slideshow options as well.  These usually require that you burn a disc with the photos on them or use a USB memory stick, and configure the slideshow options on-screen.  There are even software packages that will allow you to use your gaming consoles, like the Xbox 360 as a photo slideshow player.

In a few simple steps, you can establish your home theater as a virtual photo-sharing library, fully-equipped with slideshows that offer music, voice-overs and special effects.  Have fun tweaking your slideshow settings and be sure to stand back from your HDTV the first time you go through your photos – you might not recognize them in their most pristine HD form!

Lauren is a contributing author for the HD Envy blog.  HD Envy is a team of dedicated professionals who want to help you increase the style of your home theater with a flat screen TV frame.  You can fully customize your flat screen TV frame to match any wood stain, leather color or other material, and you can choose from a wide range of frame styles.  Your flat screen TV frame will be the finishing touch of your home theater, and will be the envy of your guests.  And because HD Envy uses industry manufacturing standards, your flat screen TV frame will be so easy to install that you can begin enjoying its sophisticated presence within a few minutes of its arrival.

Many of us have a wired or wireless connection to a PC in our home theaters. What’s better than watching a slideshow of your latest trip abroad or videos of your nephew’s first steps on the big screen? Microsoft hopes you find these things, and many other PC media interactions, to be much easier with the upcoming release of Windows 7 Media Center.

There are plenty of upgrades in this Media Center that will make it a pleasure to browse on any flat panel TV. The start menu has received some slight visual enhancements, so that you are immersed in the improved experience right away. The “Now Playing” tab on the start menu has received an expansion, and the preview video still is much larger than before. This allows not only for easier identification of what’s up next, but also for more text to be displayed beneath the image.

The video library itself now includes thumbnails and titles of each video that is able to be played. This will make distinguishing between home videos and rented or purchased content much easier. Also, there is a “Video Play All” option now available, meaning that you can sit back and enjoy hours of your videos uninterrupted, or quickly navigate through those you want to save for another time.

Onto pictures, those still cousins of video. Windows 7 Media Center has a new feature called “Ambient Slideshow”. This allows for all of your pictures rated three stars or more to be played in a random order with two main views: a zoomed-out view of all of your pictures, or a zoomed-in view of a single picture. The attention to detail in this view makes it great as a background visual for a party, or as a screensaver on your PC.

The Picture Library is now able to be sorted by rating (between one to five stars), and you can share pictures more easily with other connected media devices. One feature that will please many people is the addition of the slideshow option. Now you can access the “Slideshow Creator” and create your personalized slideshow with pictures and music that you select, and save it to show it off at a later time. Picture navigation is much easier in Windows 7 Media Center, as you can turbo-scroll through large picture libraries, like fast-forwarding video at 10x speed, and release the button to stop at a specific point in the library.

The final aspect of Windows 7 Media Center that we’ll cover is the music section. More details now exist for all of you songs, and you can easily navigate through these by going left and right for categories and up and down for details. In the Music Now Playing screen, you’ll notice a more fluid display. Periodically fading in and out between all of your cover art and the particular song’s metadata, this screen is more detailed and easy to understand (and the cover art will look glorious on your HDTV!).

More features in Windows 7 Media Center will be announced as the release date draws nearer, but these are a handful of the ones that will look and sound best in your home theater.

Lauren is a contributing author for the HD Envy blog. HD Envy produces and distributes wall mount TV frame solutions for your home theater. If you’ve ever wanted to spice up your home theater, a wall mount TV frame is the perfect choice. It will be uniquely you, as each wall mount TV frame can be custom made based on your current décor. And because HD Envy uses industry standards to produce each wall mount TV frame, you can install it with ease on nearly any LCD or plasma TV on the market. For a stylish home theater that will make your neighbors drool, check out the wall mount TV frame options at HD Envy.