In September of 2002, I was contacted by Intel to see if I was interested in being sponcered for my next project. At the time, I was working on the Road RagE project and had plans for my Workstation. However, after speaking to a few other modders on the net that had also been sponcered, I figured I should probably not pass up on this oppertunity and start something else simultaneously.

The Home Theater Personal Computer was a fairly new concept at the time and something I had considered (i.e. a central computer for home media in the living room), but never really jumped on, so this seemed to be a good new project to begin. Intel sent me all top-of-the-line parts including a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 and a D850EMD motherboard. I, in my infinite wisdom decided that to compliment these highest-end parts would buy the highest-end from other manufacturers to build something to stun the computing world (i.e. the HTPC to end all HTPCs).

PLUS, I decided to build a kick-ass Home Theater while I was at it. Obviously, I would need a High Definition Television in order to be able to read anything on the screen.... and that was just the start of the $21,000 money pit.

There are two parts to this creation:

The Home Theater

The Home Theater PC