Getting content to your HTPC

February 10, 2009 · Filed Under How-To Guides

Well the most important thing about having a HTPC is having content, and being able to watch it through your HTPC on your TV! So here we will cover how to get content onto your HTPC.

The first thing to cover is getting TV through your HTPC. Some people have asked me why I would want to do this, since my TV can already receive TV. Well having it go through your HTPC allows you to use your HTPC as a PVR (a personal video recorder), which means you can record TV for playback later, or pause TV while you are watching it.

So how do you do this? Well it’s quite simple, all you need to do is put a TV tuner into your HTPC (see our TV Tuner section for recommendations). Then you just connect coaxial cable into the card (the cable that usually connects from your antenna to the TV), and you now have TV going into your HTPC.

Some people like to store all their other content on a big harddrive on their HTPC. But if you are anything like me you probably have a lot of your content (like movies, music, photos), on other computers around the house, you probably want to be able to access these on your HTPC.

Well most motherboards these days have Ethernet built in to them. Using this you can run a LAN cable from one computer to the other (or to a router as most people have these for using the internet), and share through these. If you have wireless built into your motherboard, or a wireless card in your computer, you can also share through wireless. Wireless is slower so might not be the best idea if you want to watch lots of high definition movies over this connection.

To share something on a windows machine, on the computer that the folder is located, right click on the folder and click on properties. Then select the Sharing tab and click the share button. If you are suing XP it might tell you about some security risks, but instead click ‘just enable file sharing’. If you are using linux, well then you should already know how to share files :P.

Also don’t forget there is the plain old DVD. If you have a DVD drive in your computer, just put a DVD in it and you can play it. If you invest in a Blu-Ray player you can also play Blu-Ray disks.

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