Today’s personal computers come in a variety of designs and sizes–the era of the one-size-fits-all beige box has long passed. But as our living rooms become more theaterlike, with multichannel speaker systems and big-screen high-definition TVs, the thought of plugging a boxy PC into an entertainment center seems unappealing.

Enter the home theater PC. An HTPC is a specially built system that lives alongside your other audiovisual components and is designed to look like it belongs in the same rack as a multichannel receiver, satellite or cable set-top box, and other devices. The HTPC can be the repository for your entire digital media library; you can view your home video and photographs on the big screen and hear digital music on high-quality speakers, or share everything with other PCs over your home network. The HTPC also gives you the ability to play 3D Blu-ray movies (as well as standard Blu-ray and DVD movies).

Let’s take a quick look at the component matrix for this system, including the cost.

Read the full, lengthy story here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/217828/build_a_3d_home_theater_pc_with_sandy_bridge.html