It does not necessary be big. THere are HTPC that are in SFF size, but as you can expect, it;s not that powerful. You can hardly play game on it as well, i mean the new games. There are HTPC casing that are desktop type, like the Silverstone casing. It's kind big, but at least it's not standing and it look nice and matching to home theater sets.

There are motherboard that can let you go pass if you do not attach keyboard and mouse. I think newer mobo do support this. You just need to setup and config the HTPC, the rest is up to you. HTPCer will put in a remote control as well, and it's will your mouse. Read up on HTPC, those who set it up make it so convenient that it;s almost the same as normal DVD player, no hassle at all.

For the slow loading time, there is always hibernation mode or you can leave it on and put it into either sleep or standby.

One of the advantage of HTPC is its upscaler capability. It's rival even the best hardware upscaler, but there is always a cost. YOu need a good processor, ram and gpu to do that.

Ya, you still need to do a lot of setting and ya, the smallest HTPC will be bigger than TVix.

I think HTPCis for the people who wanna experiment and have the satisfaction feeling when it works. TVix is for the people who want to get straight to the point.