Make Your 27” LCD TV Even More Versatile

If you watch digital TV on your 27” LCD TV, you may also be taking advantage of the possibilities of Digital Video Recorders (DVR) or TiVo. Want to take your viewing experience to the next level? Consider integrating your 27” LCD TV with a home theater PC. You can access any media files, like digital image files, audio files, or videos, as well as watch your favorite shows or DVDs. If you want to add a PC to your home theater, you have a few options:

Buy a PC with the Media Center version of Windows XP, and make sure it has a TV tuner card capable of capturing digital signals from your cable or satellite box. Once it’s installed, it works just like a DVR. You won’t need to buy a high-end PC to integrate with your 27” LCD TV if you just want to record and play shows and movies – if you also want to play graphics-intensive video games, you may need a more expensive PC with greater graphics capability. Just make sure you get plenty of memory.

Upgrade your PC. You can buy a copy of Microsoft’s operating system with Media Center. Frequently it comes bundled with a TV tuner card you’ll also need. If you have decent computer skills, you can handle the installation fairly easily.

If you don’t want to upgrade to a new operating system, a number of software companies produce applications that perform the same chores as Media Center – some are even free (but their features are limited). You’ll still need a TV tuner card, though.

Now that you have a PC ready to go, it’s time to integrate it into your home theater system so your 27” LCD TV can handle the video feed. A 27” unit is ideal for this purpose; sets that are larger may display a reduced image quality when the TV signal is sent through your computer.

How you send the signal to your TV is the main hurdle to overcome. There are many different audio and video options for joining the two; the method you choose will obviously depend on the inputs and outputs available on both your PC and your TV. Older, standard-definition LCD TVs will have, at a minimum, a composite-video connection (a yellow video connection that's usually accompanied by red and white stereo audio jacks). Hopefully, it will also provide an S-Video port. Newer 27” LCD TVs should provide component inputs, and more advanced 27” LCD TVs that are HDTV capable will supply DVI or HDMI inputs.

Once your computer is connected to your LCD TV, you can use Media Center to keep track of your media files and handle your DVR recording needs. If you want to record TV without using Media Center, similar products on the market can do the job. SnapStream's Beyond TV comes bundled with many TV tuner cards, so if you're building a home theater or upgrading a machine you already own, you might end up with a copy by default. Add the Beyond Media program for organizing photo, music, and other media files, and it does pretty much everything Media Center does. Beyond TV doesn't support every TV tuner card on the market, so check the hardware specs first.

If you have no interest in recording TV programs, you can even use programs such as Windows Media Player, iTunes, and PowerDVD to manage your preexisting media library using software you already have. Whichever option you choose, make sure you have plenty of hard disk space; once you start recording television programs or watching your home videos on your 27” LCD TV, you'll find you need all the space you can get.

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