Many manufacturers are working toward developing complete home entertainment solutions. The more that people integrate computers into their entertainment centers, the more they realize that the future is an entertainment system controlled completely by the computer. You can store an entire CD or DVD collection on a hard drive and use your computer to watch and listen, or to control the receiver and TV in a larger system. To fill this emerging demand in the market place for cyber solutions, computer manufacturers as well as manufacturers of entertainment equipment are finding common ground and offering customers products that completely integrate the computer into the home entertainment center.

Incorporating Your Computer into a Home Entertainment Solution
There are different ways that this can be done. You might build a media center computer and connect it directly to your home entertainment center. For many customers, however, this can get very expensive and may not be worth the cost. As an alternative, products are available that are intended to be connected to your stereo receiver, but are made with the singular purpose of allowing media files stored on your computers to be played back on your main television and stereo. This option is becoming more popular as wireless technology improves.

If you have a small apartment or a college dorm room, you may just want to connect your computer directly to your home entertainment center. Sound cards and video cards both have a variety of outputs so that you can use cables that are compatible with your receiver and television. High end sound cards often have a digital output and it is common for video cards to have an S-Video output, both of which are frequently used in home theater equipment. Keep in mind that no matter what the quality of the media you are playing, it can come out no better than the quality allowed by the cables connecting the playback device to your speakers.

For a complete home entertainment solution, you may consider having your home "integrated." This can include placing speakers throughout your home such that when you change rooms, the speakers will automatically turn on in the room that you just entered and turn off in the room that you just left. You may also network all the computers in your home and make media files accessible on all of them, allowing you to play them back on a connected television or stereo. Some might think that this is extravagant--but if you want a total home entertainment solution, it may be exactly what you had in mind.