^^ well in comparison yes, HTPC has a higher power footprints than a media player. Margin is tough to calculate, but yes its significantly higher. A typical media player will not go beyond 20-30 or at the max 50W, a PC running XBMC on the other hand will certainly touch atleast 200W (CPU alone is 70-100W)........what I can say is it should not be much of a problem for most of us users as HTPC does not run for like more than couple of hrs, unlike a NAS might (which is where we should be concerned about the power consumption). Then HTPC is more flexible, better codec support, more polished YAMJ, with programs like XBMC, Boxbee, better choice of media programs ... etc etc.
Finally decision is based on one needs.
