HTPC - Abreviation for 'Home Theater PC'. Home Theater PCs are the latest craze in personal computers and audio-visual consumer electronics. Home Theater PCs are the result of a technological merger between the two industries. HTPCs do not look like your regular 'tower' or 'desktop' PC, but look very much like your DVD player or cable or satellite box. They are designed to sit on a shelf next to your television and can provide computer services, internet, email, play and record DVD's, tune in and record television, play video games, and virtually anything imaginable that concerns video and audio media services, as well as the ability to 'talk back' and interact with a video or audio program. One HTPC 'box' may replace the several boxes already connected to the average person's television. With a HTPC, there is no need to purchase multiple 'set-top' boxes - like a Tivo DRV player, a DVD player or recorder, a game system, an internet receiver (like WebTV or MSN-TV), a satellite box, and a surround sound system, for instance. One HTPC box can do all that and, because it is also a personal computer, is 'future ready' and can do whatever new TV concept becomes popular in the future simply by adding software to it. When you turn on your HTPC and navigate it through your television, you do see your typical computer desktop with windows. Instead, you see menus which are designed to display nicely on your television - menus which are designed to navigate using a universal remote control. While the desktop on desktop computers is designed with the idea that its user is right in front of their monitor, a HTPC is designed with the idea the user is setting at a distance (on a couch maybe) from a TV set. The most popular operating system HTPCs use is Microsoft's Media Center Edition, which is only available with a new HTPC and is not available as an upgrade to Windows XP. Media Center Edition offers an easy to use navigation system for HTPC as well as the tradional Windows desktop environment, which could be used on a separate video output that could lead to a desktop environment that uses traditional computer monitors (or flat panels), mice and keyboards. Media Center Edition is fully compatible with all the Windows software on the market.