[drewhiggins]

Just grab XBMC off team-xbox.com (it's free), grab an old Xbox from cash converters or eBay and mod it up. They make awesome media centres, if you can put up with 733MHz and 64MB RAM for playing 1080i/p high-def.

and then buy an extender for mce (from u.s. not australia as they never got them!) and you've got a nice little mcbox. you can't go wrong and then upgrade the HD to something like 200gb. i did (but i got the extra 2gb out of the standard 8gb) and store your mp3 collection.

and then solder on some usb and firewire ports, add a dvd burner and it will rock. i don't think you can play live tv as standard on them but you can have web radio which is a pretty cool thing to do. waaaaay cheaper than a 360, the 180 works well.