Here is the system I'm thinking of buying:

• AOpen XCcube AV  (reviews here and here. Some info about using it as a media center pc here.)
• Pentium 4 2.4Ghz
• 512 MB RAM
• Asus A9550GE/TD Video Card
• Seagate SATA 80GB Hard Drive ( I will increase drive space later with an external firewire drive.  I want this so my media storage is a little more portable)
• Sony DWD-18A 8x DVD Double Layer Rewriteable Drive
• Microsoft Media Center Remote Control

I priced this all out a MWave for about $780 dollars.  I am lacking a TV Tuner because I'm going to purchase that later when I have some more money.  I plan on buying this tuner:

• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 250MCE

Depending on when I buy the tuner, if I have enough funds to also get a second digital cable box I may get this instead:

• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500MCE

A Dual tuner would be nice, but it's a pain with digital cable since the cable box only sends one signal out at a time.  I wonder if there are any cable boxes out there with multiple tuners, that'd be nice.

As I've said in an earlier post I have several reasons for putting a computer in my living room like this.  Here are some of my reasons in more detail:

1. Have an easy way to play mp3/wma music.  I currently don't listen to my music very much while I'm at home because it's to difficult to hook up my laptop or mp3 player to my stereo each time I want to play music.  Media center with the remote would be great for this.
2. Have an easy way to store all my DVD's without worrying about the disks.  Ok, so many of you would say I'm lazy if I just want to avoid putting a DVD into my DVD player.  The real reason I want to do this is when you combine the storage of DVD's on a hard disk with a media extender, I can then play DVD's on any TV in the house without worrying about where the actual DVD disk is.
3. Media extender for my XBox looks very cool.  I currently have a Replay TV, but I only have one and it's connected to my main TV.  It would be very nice to be able to play any of my media anywhere in the house.
4. I'd like a better way to do DVR than with my ReplayTV.  I like my ReplayTV, but I'd like to drop the $12 or so a month that I pay for service. 
5. I'd like a quick way to check email and surf the web.  I plan on using a DVI to Component Video to connect the rig to my TV.  This creates a very clear, usable display using my TV.  With a wireless keyboard and trackball I will be able to do most of my simple surfing and email using my TV. 
6. I have lots of ideas on how to use a central “family“ computer.  More on this once I get developing.
7. My wife is really into scrapbooking.  Right now the photo printer is in the basement and since I'm always messing with the server it's connected to, she doesn't use it very often to print.  Instead she goes to the local CVS to get her photo's printed.  She says she'd use the photo printer more if it was in the living room.  So now she can pop the memory card from the camera into the computer and crop/print from the TV.

If anyone has any comments on the hardware I picked out, I'd appreciate it.  I'm still working on putting together the funds to buy this sucker, so I'm not sure when I will get around to buying it.  I'll post my experience once I do.