A guy I know from another forum PM'd me the following. Unfortunately I am not as much of a geek as he thinks I am, so I am not in much of a position to comment, other then I don't think that what he wants to do is feasible for money he is considering. But I figured the Forum would be able to put together a better answer.

What I am looking to do is build a HTPC for the center of my HT. I want to be able to record up to 4 programs at a time. I would like to hook the PC up to my HT and control it by remote all of which I know there are PCI boards for and also good software.
Good audio 5.1 at least from the sound card.
All this should be able to network with my laptop but while I am able to put this stuff together getting it to work is another matter I am an audio tech (sound engineer for bands , studio) so working with this stuff is not that hard but I never got into computers till it was to late to really know what I am doing.
I keep hoping some one will come out with a good HTPC but the few that have are way out there like 6000$ and that is crazy. I am looking at $1000-$1500 at the most.