My original xbox has been serving me very well for a number of years as a soft-modded media center with XBMC. It plays nearly every format imaginable including DVD isos and rips. Unfortunately in the last year or so it fails to boot about 10-20% of the time. Usually a couple of restarts fix the problem and it comes up. Also it can't handle the most recent x264 720p and 1080i/p content. So I've been looking for a reasonable replacement.
The Xbox 360 is out since it only supports WMV and Divx content. I'm unwilling to dedicate a heavy duty machine to transcode in realtime. The PS3 is out for a similar reason. The wii only outputs 480p so it's not really an upgrade.
The Apple TV was an attractive option but it doesn't support the x264 720p content found on BitTorrent either. So I decided to pass on that.
This led me to the Popcorn Hour (
http://www.popcornhour.com) which I purchased a few months back. Their promises of compatibility don't live up to reality and their quality assurance team should be shot. I sent it back and took a $30-$40 hit from restocking costs.
The $600 Mac Mini was the next option but the cost and lack of updates for the last year and half have kept from picking one up. I was hoping for a product revision at the last apple event but it hasn't happened yet.
So I opted for the DIY solution. Storage is all on external arrays so I opted to reuse an old laptop drive I have since it won't be actively reading or writing to disk while in operation. I also opted to avoid a Blu-Ray or DVD drive for now since both are handled via the PS3. It will be sitting directly above my router so wireless isn't necessary. My plan is to install the windows version of XBMC initially and attempt to tri-boot Windows, Linux and Mac OS X on it. I'll let you folks know how it goes.
1 x ($33.99) MEM 1Gx2|CRUCIAL CT2KIT12864AA667 R - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146526 1 x ($39.99) HTPC CASE COMPUCASE|7K09 RT - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121027 1 x ($79.99) MB GIGABYTE GA-73PVM-S2H 7100 775 R - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128072 1 x ($119.99) CPU INTEL|C2D E7200 2.53G 775 45N R - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115052 Extended Warranty: $0
Subtotal: $273.96
Tax: $0.00
Shipping and Handling: $28.96
Total Amount: $302.92