The HTPC Manifesto

It is hard to believe that I have been involved with various HTPC websites for almost 5 years and here at MissingRemote.com for almost two years. In that time, my goal has always been to provide a resource for folks to build a better media center PC. I like what we have accomplished so far with all the credit going to MissingRemote.com’s great editorial staff. However, I do think we have room to grow and improve on what we can offer our readers. There are number of ways we can do that but the one we are going to concentrate on first is hardware reviews.

To be frank, we have underperformed in this area. We have never really sat down and put a pencil to paper to figure out what benchmarks the HTPC community would be interested in. We have lots of ideas but have never combined them into a cohesive document that can be used as our testing methodology. Over the next while, hopefully on a weekly basis, we are going to outline our plan and post it up on our site for comment by the community. With everyone’s help, I think we can put something together that is light years ahead of what anyone else on the Internet is currently doing.

What inspired this? Well take a look at this link. SilentPCReview, in their never ending quest to perfect the silent PC, has reached out to the community to acquire the tools necessary to continue their great work. Silent Mike & SilentPCReview is a perfect example of what a no compromise, fact based site should be. They have the proper tools and accept nothing less then accurate controlled testing. Not only that, they have gone out of their way to work with case and other developers to bring products that benefit the community. I encourage you to donate if you can.

This is the style of site I think is necessary for the HTPC community. There are lot of folks out there that could benefit from a site with a solid testing methodology that focuses on HTPC specific benchmarking. Of course, we will still continue with our guides :).

What does my pointy hair boss speech boil down to? I want to come up with a testing methodology for each piece of hardware that focuses on HTPC specific tasks. Ultimately I hope this leads to more industry partnerships for the benefit of the community and MissingRemote.com.

Am I inspired? You bet.