I'm building this system to become the main media center for my home theater. It will need to play DVDs, CDs. media files, and act as a PVR. I would like to cut some cost but the only thing I can see is getting rid of the dual 320GB hard drives for RAID and just doing a single 400GB or 500GB.

Anybody see other areas where I can cut cost. Right now this system is running about $1400.

Case: Silverstone SST-GD01MX - $249
<img src="http://images10.newegg.com/NeweggImage/productimage/11-163-076-01.jpg">

Motherboard: Asus M2N-E Socket AM2 - $94
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ - $63
Memory: OCZ DDR2 800 1GBx2 CL4 - $120
Power Supply: Seasonic 500W Modular PSU - $124
Video Card: ASUS EN8600GT HDCP - $142
Hard Drives: Seagate 80GB SATA - $42, 2x Seagate 320GB SATA - $84 each
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS 9500 - $48
Wireless LAN Adapter: Netgear WG311T - $44
TV Tuner: AVerMedia M780 Combo ATSC/NTSC - $100 w/NVDIA PureVideo Decoder
Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit - $185
Keyboard: Microsoft MCE Keyboard - $49

Sony's Blu-Ray drive is coming down in price but still not worth it until one format start to pull away.

or an AppleTV. Even if you bought an DVD player like an Oppo and used your cable providers DVR you would be cheaper than the PC you're building.

I used the stand alone to record stuff, edit out the commercials and then give it to others on DVD-R. The stand alone died so that is why I'm looking at building. My current DVD player is the first gen Sony changer (DVP-C600D) so that one is due for an upgrade too.

The reason I went 3 was because I was going to do a RAID striping array with the 2 320GB drives for storage.

I might just go with 1-400GB or 500GB since the RAID seems like overkill.

Nothing you're doing with an HTPC is so I/O intensive that you need separate spindle sets.

unless you need continuous availability... which you don't need from an HTPC

mirroring only protects you from physical disk failure. That leaves data corruption, accidental deletion, virus infection, etc. A 2nd drive that you just copy everything to on a regular basis protects from all of that.

Maybe put the OS on that for quietness, faster boots, etc...

What kind of interface does it have if it's taken out of the XBOX case? IDE? I'll have to look into that since it sounds relatively easy.

First you'll need a mini ATAPI adapter to plug it in to your motherboard unless you're going to run it using USB headers. Second you need some hacked drivers for it to be recognized by Windows. And finally, the only software they could get to play it back on the PC downconverts the resolution to 540p. That makes it pretty much worthless.

Might be tempting for $300.<ul><li><a href="http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pna/v3/pg/product/details/0,,2076_310069963_457317457,00.html">Pioneer Blu-ray drive</a></li></ul>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=748426">http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=748426</a</li></ul>

HD-DVD player to work properly in a PC. Issues with drivers, video cards, software, patches, etc, etc...

IMO, much better off just spending the $500 on a rack unit and leave the HTPC to standard DVD and music.

you said 'PC' :)

<ul><li><a href="http://www.legitreviews.com/article/532/2/">http://www.legitreviews.com/article/532/2/</a</li></ul>

I agree that it appears to work with no problems but I'm still curious to know if the software is downconverting to 540p or not. He talks about getting 1080p instead of 1080i from the stand alone but yet his resolution is set to 720p so none of that really matters.