Anti-Virus For a HTPC, is it Needed?

This question comes up often around the net so I will have a go at and come up with the correct answer.Do you need Anti-Virus software on your HTPC?  Yes.

Before the HTPC blew up Security software wasn't crucial on HTPC's due to the fact that it made them to become very slow and used a lot of resources.  These are the only justification you can imagine these days for choosing not to configure Security software and both are a moot point.At the time AV software is great and use only a small amount of memory, and it's not as if we are running out of RAM nowadays.  Do you actually need all 3GB of your RAM, on any occasion???  The reason it would be wise to have it on a HTPC, well there are more than one.

In the first place just because you may not be surfing "shady" websites on it doesn't mean that you are immune to picking up something.  You are nevertheless still connected to the internet and therefore still susceptible to being attacked whether surfing the internet or if you are not.
B, if you're not protecting yourself and another PC on the network catches a virus you could simply get the virus from that.There are a couple more but I'm hoping that the points I have listed are more than enough to show to you that you need AV software.

If you are seeing this post wondering , they're all reasonable claims but who cares if my HTPC gets a virus, it only stores tv recordings on it.  Well, even though this is true, if your HTPC gets a virus and becomes a zombie in a worldwide botnet then that probably means it is most likely sending spam, carrying out DDos attacks or any of a number of things that a botnet might be involved in.And not only that but if your HTPC is linked into your home network the same as mine then it will most likely make it a lot simpler to infect other machines on the network, particularly if they're also defenseless.

So now that I've made you understand that you must have Anti-Virus software, the question is which one?  Well there are some fantastic free Anti-Virus solutions, however as far as free security softwares go Microsoft Security Essentials is the one to go for.  It is very fast, works perfectly with the built in Microsoft Firewall, its free and it scores very highly in reviews, even doing better than paid solutions in some cases.As I have show it gives some control over what it can do but my advice would be to set it to scan everything in real time and automatically delete any viruses found.  You don't want it to keep giving you notifications asking how you want to handle a threat while your using your HTPC.  I would also suggest you get it to run a complete scan once a week, I have mine scheduled to occur in the early morning when I know for a fact no one will be using the HTPC.