Don’t want to wait until the end of the year or beyond for the new features announced on the Xbox One? You can do most everything that it offers with a lounge room PC right now. Here’s how.
There’s plenty to like and hate about the Xbox One, but whatever your feelings, you can’t get your hands on one at this minute. But you can mimic many of the headline features. Below, we’ve grabbed the key aspects highlighted in the announcement release and looked at how you can do the same thing.
The emphasis with the Xbox One so far is very much on the entertainment features rather than gaming (we’ll hear more about that in a couple of weeks at E3). To emulate that aspect, your best bet is to build your own home media centre, and a lot of our suggestions will fall into that category. Here are our most useful guides to setting one up, whether you want a specific PC or to convert your existing console:
- The Complete Guide To Creating A Seamless, Play-Everything Media Centre
- The Complete Guide To Turning Your Video Game Console Into A Living Room Media Centre
- Turn A Raspberry Pi Into An XBMC Media Centre In Under 30 Minutes
- Build Your Dream Media Centre For Under $700
- Set Up A Killer Media Centre This Weekend
- The Five Biggest Media Centre Annoyances (And How To Fix Them)
Xbox One Promises, Current Realities
Watching television: Set up a media centre as described above and you’re already good to go. If that seems like a lot of effort, you can always pay for Foxtel on Xbox with the current model, which already includes voice control. Speaking of which . . .
Voice control: If you’re using Windows Media Center, voice control is already possible. As mentioned above, Foxtel on Xbox also offers this feature.
Seeing overseas TV broadcasts: If you want to watch overseas streaming services, check out our guide to avoiding region blocking.
Switching between different apps: Any computer can do this. It’s exciting for a console, but in Windows, Mac and Linux land, it’s an expected feature. Ditto for making Skype calls.
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