Floppyhead – Digital Media and Streaming

Watching HD programming from your cable provider requires a digital cable tuner for your computer. Unfortunately, certain digital rights management restrictions do not allow you to buy such a tuner off the shelf and plug it into an existing computer. You have to buy a new computer from the likes of Dell or HP.

There are three main options to buy a Vista media center computer with a digital cable tuner: Dell, HP, and Velocity Micro PC (other vendors offer cable tuners but are ridiculously expensive). Dell by far has sold the most. Velocity Micro offers the best looking though most expensive solution. HP has been the forgotten one, mainly because of their decision to allow consumers to only buy one tuner and not two, a deal breaker for most. Sony, however, allows you to buy refurbished tuners for $199, which makes HP much more attractive.

Every now and then HP offers “$400 off desktop” coupons. For those looking for a HTPC, that is a great deal and worth waiting for when buying a new machine. Using this coupon (code DT3325), you can buy a m9300t for $699 from HP that comes with one tuner, an Intel Quad Core processor, 3 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and a GeForce 9500 GS. Slickdeals.net is a good website to see when HP is offering a coupon or just sign-up for HP’s newsletter. Dell alos offers the occasional deals but rarely discounts their XPS systems.

The main drawback of that system is the hard drive size and having only one tuner. For an extra $199, you can buy a refurbished tuner from Sony, bringing the system up to $899. Adding another hard drive is easy and can be done anytime.

This system is cheaper than if you built one yourself. The quad core processor is about $200 by itself, the hard drive is about $70, a copy of Vista Home Premium OEM is about $100, and one refurbished digital tuner is $199. This leaves about $130 for a case, a video card, and RAM.