You know what's fun? Being able to do anything I want on my tv very easily with a plethora of choices of programs. You know what's not fun? upscaling programs meant for a phone to 1080p and not getting promised functionality.
Have any of these STBs ever done espn360?
I have dabbled with HTPCs -mainly hooking up a desktop in a home office to a big tv in another room - but the payoff was never worth the trouble. It seemed the most worthwhile when downloading network shows when Kate Horner would preempt what I wanted to watch.
HTPC guys, what are some of the most worthwhile things you use it for?
Besides sitting on it, I stream stuff to my tv (hulu, 360, boxee, channelsurfing.net, etc), stream music to it, have pandora and last.fm, netflix, i use it for mapping directions/printing directions, playing games (mainly roms), use it as a DVR, recorded shows get saved on my windows home server box which I can stream anywhere (any other PC on the internet, my phone, etc), i look up recipes on it.
Right now, it's the only way to get Hulu on your tv as they block everything under the sun. That's its biggest draw for me really. So I could have gotten a set top box, but instead I spent $245 and built my own HTPC. Since it's a PC, it can do anything I want it to, despite the content constantly evolving. And since it's low power, and always on, it's easy to grab the remote I got for it, search for whatever you need (recipes/directions), click, print, and go.
