So I’m reassessing my entertainment center since seeing the Video Game History Foundation’s report. Since the study it’s got me thinking, if you could pick any 4 consoles to have hooked up to your TV (4 becuase I’ve got 4 inputs to my TV) which would you pick and why? I will accept modded consoles as answers too.
I wouldn’t buy any consoles, I would build (though you can buy) a really powerful gaming PC to plug up to my 4k TV. I’ve actually recently done just that and it works amazingly well.
Things to make it a good experience:
Make sure you have a 4k TV with HDMI 2.1 for 120hz gaming
Configure Windows to bypass the login screen on boot
Configure Steam to launch in Big Picture mode on startup
Buy an Xbox Controller and the little dongle for it (it works better than just bluetooth)
Buy a small wireless keyboard with built in trackpad for the odd occasion you need to use a mouse and keyboard (looking at you EA Play).
With that, you’ve got the best console ever. Huge backlog of games, games on steep discounts, a machine that has a much better experience outputting to a 4k TV than something like a Steamdeck or a console. I’ve tried the Steamdeck to a 4k TV and the quality was pretty awful; 720p does not upscale to 4k well at all. And if you wanted to, you could set it up with emulators using retroarch for any games you are missing.
My TVPC specs:
Ryzen 7800x
32GB DDR5-6000
2TB NVME SSD
RTX 4080
Fractal Design Torrent Nano
I picked that case specifically for the huge 180mm fan in the front, the fact it can fit a massive cooler like the Peerless Assassin and the GPU gets fresh air from the bottom. It’s not the smallest case, but it stays cool and super quiet.
I did try building a HTPC in the past, but it was just a headache to maintain. If didn’t use it for a few days, I found I was inundated by a bevy of updates. Kodi is a pretty powerful home theater software, but definitely not as simple as launching a Netflix app. My partner also had no idea how to operate it. Personally I prefer Moonlight streaming from my PC in my office. Once I get an ethernet port installed in the living room, it’ll have great picture quality and latency. Your build does sound pretty cool though.
Yeah it was a headache for me in the past too, but the latest Steam Big Picture which behaves more like a Steamdeck has made it pretty easy. Since it launches right away, I can easily launch and quit steam games with 0 issue and when I’m done I used big picture to just shut the PC down.
One issue I found was if I let the PC sleep, it always brings up the login screen on wake so I just shut it down everytime. NVME’s are so fast the boot up is whatevs. Non-steam games are also a little painful as sometimes it won’t switch active windows, or I have to login or something.
I only use this machine for games. Like you said, HTPC was a pain. I have a different server that I have Plex setup on and I use Apple TV’s / Roku’s for streaming.
Oh yea, Moonlight is really great if you already have a powerful PC.
I definitely will go with a PC for the living room, mostly because I don’t want to use a smart TV’s “smarts”, but it’ll be for streaming of all kinds, including Moonlight (or similar).
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I wouldn’t buy any consoles, I would build (though you can buy) a really powerful gaming PC to plug up to my 4k TV. I’ve actually recently done just that and it works amazingly well.
Things to make it a good experience:
With that, you’ve got the best console ever. Huge backlog of games, games on steep discounts, a machine that has a much better experience outputting to a 4k TV than something like a Steamdeck or a console. I’ve tried the Steamdeck to a 4k TV and the quality was pretty awful; 720p does not upscale to 4k well at all. And if you wanted to, you could set it up with emulators using retroarch for any games you are missing.
My TVPC specs:
I picked that case specifically for the huge 180mm fan in the front, the fact it can fit a massive cooler like the Peerless Assassin and the GPU gets fresh air from the bottom. It’s not the smallest case, but it stays cool and super quiet.
I did try building a HTPC in the past, but it was just a headache to maintain. If didn’t use it for a few days, I found I was inundated by a bevy of updates. Kodi is a pretty powerful home theater software, but definitely not as simple as launching a Netflix app. My partner also had no idea how to operate it. Personally I prefer Moonlight streaming from my PC in my office. Once I get an ethernet port installed in the living room, it’ll have great picture quality and latency. Your build does sound pretty cool though.
Yeah it was a headache for me in the past too, but the latest Steam Big Picture which behaves more like a Steamdeck has made it pretty easy. Since it launches right away, I can easily launch and quit steam games with 0 issue and when I’m done I used big picture to just shut the PC down.
One issue I found was if I let the PC sleep, it always brings up the login screen on wake so I just shut it down everytime. NVME’s are so fast the boot up is whatevs. Non-steam games are also a little painful as sometimes it won’t switch active windows, or I have to login or something.
I only use this machine for games. Like you said, HTPC was a pain. I have a different server that I have Plex setup on and I use Apple TV’s / Roku’s for streaming.
Oh yea, Moonlight is really great if you already have a powerful PC.
I definitely will go with a PC for the living room, mostly because I don’t want to use a smart TV’s “smarts”, but it’ll be for streaming of all kinds, including Moonlight (or similar).