Back in the roaring PC-crazy days of the 1990s, if you wanted some sort of big-screen PC-TV system, you had to buy a PC system that was somehow pre-packaged with an oversized TV set. There were several computer companies that jumped onto that early big-screen PC-TV computer bandwagon hoping to rake in the big bucks. They saw the early market growth for TV Tuner cards for regular PCs and the early initial hype for internet-on-TV appliances -- and they thought why not sell expensive big-screen PC systems. (Keep reading and you'll see what is the much more affordable 21st Century way to have your own big-screen PC-TV system.)

For instance, back in the roaring PC dotcom-crazy '90s, Gateway Computers had its Gateway Destination Big Screen PC which can be considered the granddaddy of the pre-packaged big-screen PC-TVs since it was the first one out on the market. Then Compaq came out with its Compaq PC Theater big-screen system. And then the Mobius Trading Group had its Mobius PC-TV Home Entertainment System which came in 29-inch, 33-inch, and 37-inch screen sizes and had a cool voice recognition function as the ultimate in remote control. As an example of its PC computing power in those roaring days of the '90s, the Mobius PC-TV Home Entertainment System had a Pentium 166 MHz processor, 16 megabytes RAM (expandable to 128 megabytes), a 1.6 gigabyte harddrive, a video graphics accelerator card, 3.5" disk drive, 8X CD-ROM drive, a 33.6kbps fax/modem, and the obligatory TV Tuner card which was 125-channel cable-ready. Although the basic PC that formed the basis for the Mobius PC-TV may seem relatively ancient by today's standards, the Mobius PC-TV was perhaps ahead of its time since it came with not only a remote-control keyboard, which had a built-in trackball, but also had "voice recognition technology" as the ultimate in remote control where you can have up to 64 vocal commands to make the Mobius PC-TV change channels, raise or lower the volume, and perform macro commands that you can program into the PC-TV. And there were other big-screen PC-TVs such as the WorldVision 2000 and the WorldVision Computer Deck. The market for pre-packaged big-screen PC-TV systems has pretty much fallen to the wayside because very few people if anyone wanted to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for those systems. Those were the old days. That was the 20th Century. People would like to have large-screen interactive television systems -- but people don't want to pay an arm and a leg for such a system.

The 21st Century way of doing things nowadays is to build-your-own custom big-screen PC-TV system and which some may also call a Home Theater PC system (HTPC). You may find that building your own big-screen PC-TV can be much more affordable in terms of money spent. This goes along with people's habits when moving into new homes -- people like to buy in pieces and they like to feel like they are "building" whatever they may have in their homes. This piece-by-piece method of "building" one's home is what people have been doing for ages long before there was television. This is not necessarily like being a construction worker laying out the concrete slab and putting up the wall frames of a new house. But the "building" is more like furnishing the home with furniture piece by piece, putting up new shelves in the garage, and putting a new garden in the backyard seed by seed. And this goes along with people "building" up their electronics entertainment systems by purchasing electronic consoles piece by piece, component by component, console by console. And the PC-TV is moving into this home entertainment environment where the user is "building" his or her PC-TV by customizing his or her PC in connection with the rest of his or her other entertainment devices. For PCs in general, it has become very common for the PC user to want to "build" up (or "upgrade") his or her PC by adding new memory, adding a DVD drive, or by adding a TV Tuner card. People "build" up whatever they may have or want to have. This is what people do in their homes. And then it was naturally a matter of time before people began to realize they can actually use their PCs as entertainment devices (such as for movies, videos, TV entertainment, music, and internet support) in the home and not just for word processing.

So, instead of buying a very expensive pre-packaged big-screen PC-TV system, it is much more trendy, relatively more simple, and much more affordable to "build" your own custom big-screen PC-TV system. Depending on how "BIG" you want your screen to be, the most expensive piece of equipment would be the big-screen TV. The dropping of prices for PCs and PC equipment is making it much more affordable to buy a PC for entertainment purposes where the entertainment is listening to MP3 music, watching DVD movies, watching a video off of the internet, and, yes, watching regular TV. If you look around, you can pick up an off-the-shelf PC at a cut-rate price and install new cards such as a TV Tuner card and another video card that has a TV OUT so you can hook up the PC to a separate TV of any size. And many new PCs will come with a DVD drive built into them so you can watch DVD movies off of the PC. And if you are daring enough, you can even build a whole new PC from the motherboard up. "Building" PCs is not for the young anymore. After I showed how a PC was put together to my own father -- who is in the older AARP age-bracket -- he was soon "building," upgrading, and refurbishing PCs for friends and family. If my own father (who had never touched a PC until about one or two years ago) can "build" his own PC, then I would dare say that you can too.

As for building the PC-TV component which will become part of your overall entertainment system, look at the rest of the PC-TV pages here at the Ruel.Net website, including the main PC-TV commentary pages, the build-your-own PC-TV PVR page, and the PC-to-TV page with info on video graphics cards that have TV OUT ports so you can connect the PC to a TV using a S-Video cable or a regular RCA composite cable (you will need a video card with a TV OUT to hook up to a TV set of any size; note that most TV Tuner cards by themselves don't have a TV OUT port, so you will have to look for a separate video card with the TV OUT), and the PC-to-TV page also touches on connecting PC to HDTV, and the PC-TV cable connections page to help you figure out how to hook up your PC-TV to your other electronic consoles. And click here for wireless keyboards and remote controls for your PC-TV system.

If you already have a good-sized TV set (for some people, anything larger than a 13-inch screen is a "big screen"), hook up your PC-TV to your TV set and you will have your own version of a big-screen PC-TV system (please note again, you will need a TV OUT port if you want to hook your PC to a TV set of any size -- otherwise you are watching TV on only the PC monitor). If you are more interested in something that is much bigger, there are some really good buys out there if you want to get a 20-inch to 40-inch regular television set. If you want some sort of super large big-screen TV or a flat-screen television which is what many people will want to buy right now and in future years to come when prices drop, then you can probably find some really good buys out there if you look hard enough (some flat-screen TVs can be bought for a prices beginning at around $500) but you may want to expect prices that are least $1000 and most likely to be in the $2000-to-$5000 current price range if not much more. You can look for Big-Screen Televisions, Displays, and Projectors at stores like BestBuy.com, GoodGuys.com, and House of Projectors. And you can also go to PC Mall to look for Large-Screen PC Monitors if you want to stick with a regular PC monitor connection.

As an alternative to buying a big-screen display, you may even want to try building your own big-screen projection system. 'Baldy' writes in to suggest going to Lumenlab for instructions that you can buy and that say you can build your own projection system for about $500 or perhaps even much less. ('Baldy' sent pictures to Ruel that show his homemade projector which he had connected to his PC-TV HTPC system where his homemade projector was about the size of a small footlocker. 'Baldy' had his projector pointed at a large projection screen on a wall across a room with a DVD movie being displayed on that screen ... you can go to the Lumenlab to see similar pictures.)

Be sure to bookmark the pages here at Ruel.Net so you can refer quickly to the information you need for building your PC-TV system.

Happy PC-TV Watching!
Ruel

^*   Footnote Remark: One typical question I've received in relation to big-screen and large-screen TVs is about connecting the PC to a HDTV set for sending video output from the PC to the HDTV, i.e., getting the PC video and audio on the HDTV set. I hear that some HDTV sets have vga ports. Warning: Before you try direct connecting to the vga port, check to see if your manual or documentation for your HDTV set says anything about connecting the HDTV to a PC via the vga port. It may be safer to use a S-Video connection or a regular audio-video connection if you have a TV OUT port on your PC's video card. If your HDTV documentation doesn't say anything about connecting PCs to HDTV sets through a vga port or if it says don't connect via the vga port, well, then don't connect through the vga port or you may be risking damage to the HDTV set. I've heard some positive reports of people setting their PC video resolution to 800x600 and then connecting the PC to the HDTV as if they were hooking up a regular PC monitor via the vga port. But, again, you would be doing this at your own risk and would have to consult with your HDTV documentation to see if it is safe to do this. So if the documentation for your HDTV set does not say anything or isn't clearly stating that you can do such a vga port connection, then don't try it. Instead try a regular S-Video connection, audio-video composite connection, or coax connection for regular TV instead. I would rather wait for large flat-screen PC monitors instead of buying expensive HDTV sets, to set up something like a large flat-screen system. Watch for there to be some sort of heated competition when "low-priced" large flat-screen PC monitors come out.

Miscellaneous Older Big-Screen PC-TV Links:
(Sorry, if any of these older NEWS links are expired)