Media Centers – (May be known as, or associated with Media Center PCs, Home Media Centers, Entertainment PCs, Multimedia Home Entertainment Center, Home Telecom Center,  Digital Media Center, Entertainment Gateway, Multimedia Gateway, PC-centric Entertainment Center, Digital Home Media Center, Home Media Option, Home Media DVR, Broadband Media Center, Broadband Game Consoles, Entertainment Consoles, Home Cinema, Home Theater, Hybrid PVR, Personal Media Center.) - Media Centers are advanced set-top boxes. Media Centers can incorporate PC components and functionality, such as memory and a hard drive. Media centers usually also have DVRs. Media centers might offer wireless connections, HDTV reception, remote keypad and/or IVR capacity, videoconferencing, a VCR, a web browser, multi-screen displays, split screen viewing for TV and the web, smart card capacity, a modem for Internet connections, interactive program guide, CD Player, DVD Player, a high quality sound system, home networking and security capacity, as well as gaming and content filtering services. Moxi from Digeo is an example of an advanced media center.

If a particular service doesn't originally come with the customers media center, it may be added to their system by downloading software and/or the addition of other components such as a Digital Media Adapter (DMA). (A "sidecar" was an earlier name for something of this nature.) Portable Media Players, DMAs and Extenders might be used to communicate with your TV system.
Digital Integrated TV (Integrated TV, iDTV, Advanced High Definition Television) (Associated with Smart TVs, PCTVs, PC-TVs, PC to TV Signal Converter, Computer Televisions, Next Generation TVs, Integrated Smart Televisions, TVPCs, Multimedia Television, Intelligent TV Sets, Full-service Integrated Interactive TVs.) - The term Integrated Television was more popular several years ago. It was an impressive smart TV with some media center type functionality built-into it. Fortunately it has been re-born with vigor as the Integrated Digital Television (iDTV).  iDTV are digital TVs with media center features such as built-in electronic program guides, a personal planner as well as on-screen prompts for all sorts of good stuff and more. The iDTV may contain a media extender so you can enjoy digital entertainment directly from your PC, a media server and/or from the Internet. Example.

Media Center PC (PC-centric Entertainment Center) - With a PC-centric Entertainment Center, the Media Center is replaced and/or controlled by your PC. Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition is a major example of this. (It was formerly code-named "Freestyle"). Various versions of Microsoft's Vista operating system also offers Media Center PC functionality.
 

Digital Media Adapter - (DMA)

Gaming Consoles - (Sony PlayStation, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo)

Home Theater PC

Home Media Adapter

iTV (Apple TV)