I’ve got an older Windows XP computer hooked up to my home theater. This re-tasked veteran is used mainly to store and play ripped DVDs and other video files. However, I’ve also been playing around with streaming video from the internet to my TV. The results are hit and miss. Hulu, for example, is generally pretty good but sometimes suffers from a very low frame rate that results in jerky playback. It’s still a great place to catch free video content, but it’s not as good as it could be.

Netflix Watch Now, on the other hand, is almost flawless. We watched the full length animated movie Justice League: New Frontiers last night. Video quality was excellent, although the movie did catch up to the buffer once, causing a pause of less than a minute to re-buffer with a lower bit-rate video stream. No change in video quality was detectable. Tonight, we watched The Contractor, starring Wesley Snipes. The picture looked great on our 37″ HD TV, and playback was flawless. Too bad the movie itself wasn’t very good (my wife liked it, but she’s a bigger Snipes fan than I am).

Netflix charges $8.99/month for their cheapest plan that includes unlimited Watch Now privileges, and it’s definitely worth it for the online video alone — even if the selection is limited.

Since Netflix is a membership-only site, it may be that they can afford more bandwidth and a more robust streaming technology, but I hope some of the free sites take notice and step up their game a little.

So, how much computer do you need to stream video and watch stored content on a TV? Not much, it turns out. My low-cost dedicated HTPC (home theater pc) is an old HP Pavilion with an Athlon XP 1800 cpu, running Windows XP Home. I’m using integrated video at the moment, which happens to support my TV’s native resolution of 1280×760 (after installing the latest drivers), but I may upgrade to a cheap AGP card at some point. That would also let me switch to DVI/HDMI instead of the analog VGA connection I now have to my TV (which, honestly, looks fine to me). I’ve supplemented the 40 gb hard drive with a second drive (200gb) for movie and music storage, and I’ve also added a DVD burner for ripping and burning movies. The system memory has been bumped up to 768mb.

Someone gave me the old pc, and upgrades were made from parts I had laying around.

I’ll be picking up a wireless keyboard/mouse combo to complete the set-up (for now). I don’t need a tv tuner card or DVR functionality — my HD cable box handles those duties adequately. I’m also happy for the time being with the 2 channel stereo the on-board sound chip outputs. It sounds great when piped through my home theater speakers (then again, I’m no audiophile).

It’s good to know that a low-end pc from a few years back can still handle basic video chores.