Transforming the Family Room Entertainment Experience with a Home Theater PC

I'm about to transform my family room experience by building, configuring, and customizing a Home Theater PC.

Arguably, I've had a fantastic family room entertainment experience to-date thanks to the visionary Kenwood Sovereign Entre & DV5900M combination networked media server and DVD changer.

However, designed in 2000, the Entre has grown long in the tooth.  It just hasn't kept up with advances in home entertainment, and while I've always had the opinion that A/V vendors are the best folks to design a user experience for the family room, and desipte the fact that I don't believe PCs -- as we currently think of them -- should be in the family room,  the folks from Microsoft have surprised many with their eminently usable and extensible Media Center offering.

So, against all beliefs to the contrary, I am now convinced that the best solution to optimize my family room entertainment experience is to actully put a PC (of sorts) in my family room.

Ugh.  I get twichy just typing that.    Why?  Check out my next entry...