Silentmaxx HT11
Panasonic TH-AE200
NAD Amplifiers
Rowen R3

Introduction

HCPC (Home Cinema Personal Computer) or HTPC (Home Theater PC, US) stands for a PC which is dedicated to watching movies at home. It can be used in combination with ordinary TVs, Plasma screens, digital video projectors or even CRT projectors. It substitutes standalone DVD players, external line doublers, digital sound decoders and video recorders. In fact you can expand and adapt your system to whatever your needs are.

Advantages

By using the VGA port of the HCPC you get a progressive signal. This improves the image stability of a video projector significantly. It decreases flickering of objects which are nearly horizontal. Although more and more progressive NTSC DVD players are built, progressive PAL players are rarely available yet.
The scaling of the picture is done better by an HCPC than with most built-in scalers of projectors, especially of cheaper ones. With an HCPC you can match the native resolution of any device pixel-perfect.
Depending on the soundcard your system will substitute a 2, 6 or 8 channel surround decoder and pre-amplifier. All you need are the appropriate speakers and power-amps. However, many people lead the digital encoded sound signal via S/PIF to an external HIFI surround receiver which decodes and amplifies the stream.
Flexibility: There are almost no limits to customize the system to meet your personal wishes. Imagine a DVD player that has any strange behaviour: you cannot change anything about that. With an HCPC you simply get another software player for a few bucks. You are not satisfied with the picture quality? Buy a better video card! You want to record DVDs? Get a DVD-RW drive at the forth of the price of a standalone DVD recorder. Furthermore, it is often possible to make software updates to meet new sound or video standards.
An HCPC can serve as a digital video recorder. You can rip DVDs, extract sound from a DVD (ie. producing your own soundtrack CD) and record TV-shows (if you have a TV-card). With a capture card you can digitalize VCR tapes and edit movies taken with a digital camera.

Disadvantages

Compared to a standalone DVD player there is a long way to go before you have a system which is easy to control with all the functionality you need. You need some technical skills to configure the system and usually you need a lot of time...
It is not a big deal to assemble a PC. However, care must be taken when selecting appropriate components of an HCPC. Often cheap components do not work well in a system which must be as stable as possible. On the other hand you cannot just buy the most expensive components, as they simply are too powerful and you may get a noisy system.
What causes even more efforts is the software setup of the system. You usually want an HCPC which is as easy to control as a normal DVD player. This requires programs and setting these programs up which can be difficult and sometimes tricky.
Finally there are certain risks that the system won't work well: image stuttering, system crashes and audio sync problems are very nervig. It can be very hazardous or even impossible to solve these kind of problems.

Requirements

The goals for a good HCPC system are that it is stable and quiet. In the following section each component will be analysed shortly and a recommendation is given for parts which match the requirements.

My setup