Of course it's less functional than a PC. Pretty much everything is. If you want functionality above all, HTPCs will always be king, so long as they're fast enough.
OTOH, a decent DVR appliance has many strengths that HTPCs don't have, like hardware accelerated codecs, fast boot times, purpose-built interfaces, better reliability (due to a single purpose-built hardware set), nicer form factor, ease of use, less glitching (due to managed scheduling), and so on.
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Of course it's less functional than a PC. Pretty much everything is. If you want functionality above all, HTPCs will always be king, so long as they're fast enough.
OTOH, a decent DVR appliance has many strengths that HTPCs don't have, like hardware accelerated codecs, fast boot times, purpose-built interfaces, better reliability (due to a single purpose-built hardware set), nicer form factor, ease of use, less glitching (due to managed scheduling), and so on.