Worth upgrading?

[Whitey80]

I'm currently using an HP Touchsmart IQ800 running Windows 7.
It contains 4 tuners for PVR and I stream over a wired network to my Xbox360 via the thankfully upgraded Windows Media Center.

I run all of my music, TV shows and downloaded movies this way.
I can stream in hidef without lag, but there is some loading time that I am not terribly fond of.

Would adding a dedicated HTPC be worth it's cost in cutting this down? How about some other benefits? I know you guys that own them love these things, give me your sales pitch.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I personally think HTPC should be controlled with small Remote control, preferably same one you controlling the volume and change tv channels.
All-In-One machine you are using imo doesn't typically fit the profile due to fact your pc is build-in large display.
To upgrade or not is your choice, but most people agree for aesthetics factors HTPC case is typically something resembles audio/video component and about same size and like I mentioned controlled remotely.
I don't record my tv on my htpc, I use it solely as a media client, therefore my htpc specs are very humble Atom 330/ION/2gb ram (pics in sig)
Not much to talk about, but its capable of displaying upto 1080p HD videos/DTS sound and controllable from my Harmony remote - that's all I care about for now.
However there are bunch of people here, who love to have a bit more juice to their HTPC pcs and have really nice cases and a lot of pc raw power in them...

 

[Nugu]

If I understand this right you are using a computer (HP Touchsmart IQ800 running Windows 7) as a DVR and streaming the content across your network via UPNP (through Windows Media Center) to your Xbox360.

The "loading time" is more than likely Windows Media Center re-encoding the video content and buffering it before the stream starts. You can look into the method the video data is encoded when it is recorded and see if you can record in a method that won't have to be re-encoded so you won't get nearly as big a load time.


A small HTPC like BoredSysAdmin has would probably let you stream the shows without the "load time" by virtue of the video content not needing to be re-encoded to be displayed. Is it worth the cost? Probably not.