Thursday, October 16, 2008

Naming Today's HTPC

It is fairly common to see your media server and extenders referred to as a Home Theater PC or HTPC for short.  But more and more, those HTPC's are morphing into something more than a "PC".

I say that because we have "htpc" extenders (like the SageTV HD Extender or the VMC Linksys extender) and then there is the Xbox 360 which can be used as a VMC extender.  In the same genre is the AppleTV, TiVo and the ReplayTV, DVR boxes etc.  Another thing to note here is PC often is Windows-Centric which isn't very representative since we not only have Windows, but also Linux and Apple OS's running these devices.

So my question is this:  What should we call these devices?  Is there a good, all-encompassing name for the market?  Media Center seems to be an often used term since we see Microsoft Media Center, SageTV Media Center etc.  Is there a better name that should be used?