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.