Anyone use their laptop as htpc?

[Thilly]

Family member recently asked me to make them a relatively budget htpc, which I've done plenty of times by now, but they also just added the fact that they want a laptop rather than a desktop.

While I know you can buy spendy laptops that could be called replacement desktops and they would have plenty of power for htpc and beyond, but I'd like to find them a nice laptop in the 500-700 pricerange that could do anything short of blu-ray. Streaming video, normal dvd, etc.

I see plenty of laptops from brands I trust such as Acer in this range with chips like hd3200's which would do fine in the video department, but as far as I know 3k series doesn't support audio over hdmi.

I guess my question is; is there a laptop in the 500-700 pricerange that has audio over hdmi, OR for those of you who use laptop htpc's without hdmi audio, what do you use to connect audio? Most laptops just have headphone jacks I'd think? Do these supply enough signal to go to a 40ish inch flat panel lcd?

Thanks for your time

 

[patonb]

Any 9'series should do sound over HDMI.

Why does it got to be a laptop... It's going to get fairly hot. Why not use a shuttle?

 

[Harper]

Yes. With my new appartment, I wanted to keep the entertainment area and computer area seperate. So currently i have this VGA to TV adaptor that I put my Lenovo IdeaPad into and I watch movies from that.

I did the same with my Toshiba Satellite Pro A300 that I was using until 12 months ago.

 

[Jorsoft]

Why? I don't really see any practical point to haveing a laptop htpc. It's going to get very hot, obviously you can't make much use of wireless technology, the screen is mostly useless, you get way less computer for your money...why bother? For that same price range you can build a very competent htpc in a small form factor and keep it tucked away. Slap a couple terabye hds in there and you can store every movie you own on the thing. Can't do that with a laptop.

 

[Harper]

Depends on the definition of a HTPC. If you just want some thing to play movies, and that is it. Laptops are great. However if you want some thing that will story a few terribytes of files, then you are better off with some thing else.

 

[Thilly]

Depends on the definition of a HTPC. If you just want some thing to play movies, and that is it. Laptops are great. However if you want some thing that will story a few terribytes of files, then you are better off with some thing else.

This.

I should probably rephrase. She wants a laptop that can also play streaming video from sites like youtube, hulu, etc, and normal dvds on her TV. Doing this with as few cables as possible would be great, such as a single hdmi, or an hdmi+simple audo cables.

This won't be for storing tb's of movies and music. Probably a small-medium sized itunes library and then temporary video from sites or dvd. Wants it to be portable so she can also use it without being in the living room, etc.

I'd rather just build her a desktop htpc since it means I can get her good deals plus I can actually do something with it, but she wants a laptop so that's that I guess.