"Combined together in a single box, they truly make for a central hub of all the digital multimedia in your household. From a single source, the HTPC can deliver content to any room in the house. The concept might seem strange at first, but once you get accustomed to having a media center in your household, you'll wonder how you ever got along without one. Being in control of your media does give a somewhat empowering feeling to the owner.
Setting up a media center PC is easier said than done though. Many have tried and been disappointed in the results of trying to setup their own media center PC - as using the wrong hardware or software can really taint the media center experience, causing it to be a frustrating (and sometimes costly) expedition. So, today at GamePC, we thought we would give out some pointers as to how to build a media center correctly from the ground up, all the way from the base hardware to the operating system to the actual HTPC software set."
Great article! I particularly liked their tips for tweaking XP's GUI to work more like an appliance. I found it interesting that they lauded Microsoft's Media Center effort - their evaluation of stand-alone software found them all to be lacking in some way.