Thomas, I have both a media streamer (Popcorn Hour) and an HTPC (Vista Ultimate home built). I have an HDHomeRun to retrieve OTA HDTV signals from an indoor antenna and send to my HTPC for viewing and PVR by Vista's Windows Media Center. My other computers can also receive TV from the HDHomeRun. For shows I really care about or that family members will want to watch in various locations, I use torrents and download. Therefore, I can send the downloads to all of my machines and watch whenever and wherever I want. Once I download content from torrent sites, I copy it (using Microsoft SyncToy) to my HTPC and Popcorn Hour. Family laptop users can choose to copy (or stream from the shared directory). In general we prefer to copy -- streaming just doesn't work well with our 802.11n wireless network, and it's very annoying when the stream gets interrupted.

Overall household usage is about 10% on a 61" Samsung DLP HDTV with LED backlight connected to the HTPC, 20% on a 32" Sharp LCD HDTV connected to the Popcorn Hour, and 70% on laptops -- both in home and away.

I got fed up with the Popcorn Hour in streaming mode because it took 30+ seconds to buffer shows before they would play, shows would freeze, etc. -- purely due to distance and house construction. If you have reliable and fast networking, by all means streaming is the cheapest way to go and I know plenty of people who are happy with this solution. I installed a quiet, low wattage Samsung laptop hard drive in my Popcorn Hour (required a cheap adapter).

Overall I have not been impressed with my HTPC experience from a usability perspective. Figuring out how to get all of the components to work together was difficult and time-consuming, and about once a month I have to debug issues. Perhaps if you bought a packaged HTPC from a single vendor it might work better.

Would I do anything different? No. Something simple (Popcorn Hour) for the bedroom. Something very capable (HTPC -- also has a BluRay drive) for the living room.

It all comes down to what you want it to do.

Correction to the story according to CyberLink (click the Read link to the story):

"NEW HDMI 1.3 Support: HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) simultaneously transfers 8 channels of audio over a single cable"

It isn't difficult except for those who are unfamiliar with installing computer parts in general. Remember the first time you opened a case to install a CPU or even a hard drive with jumper selection? A bit intimidating unless you had already seen it done or read some good instructions. Hence the value of this video.

This isn't of value for many of us techies, but certainly is for others. A bit more valuable would be a video on how to install a laptop's hard drive in the Popcorn Hour. I was able to, but I've seen a few very technical forums where the question repeatedly comes up, specifically what adapter will fit.

I don't know what you are talking about, Andy. A few weeks ago I went to Monster Mini Golf, and asked for a green ball, a putter without dents in it, and a 4 meter HDMI 1000hd Ultra-High Speed HDMI Cable for suggested retail of $199.95. To my surprise, the attendant declared he could only accomodate my first two requests. On that day I swore I would never buy from Monster again because a company that doesn't have proper cable inventory at its mini golf courses does not deserve my business.

Some dummy corporations I suggest:

Monster Cabal
Monster Kabul

Bobby Picket of the Monster Mash song (recorded 1962) should sue Monster Cable (founded 1979) to give them a taste of their own medicine.

In the US there is tax in CA and shipping costs $15. Payment is made through Google Checkout.

I ordered mine on April 21, 2008, credit card was charged three days later, and as of May 1, no status change. This is standard for this company and I don't doubt they will deliver -- just showing that only order if you are willing to wait a number of weeks.