Our new Home Theatre PC, and smaller than a shoebox. We’ve combined powerful onboard Nvidia 9300 graphics and a Blu-ray drive with DVI, HDMI, Optical and Coaxial Audio out (as well as a legacy VGA ports.
Every other HTPC out there seems to be Micro ATX isntead of Mini ITX and Blu-ray is always an optional upgrade. What’s the point of having a 1080p-capable PC if you have to speed a week on Bittorrent downloading a 20GB Blu-ray rip? Blu-ray optical drives should be standard and it is on ours. Otherwise, just buy a dedicated sub £100 media player (though their interfaces are usually terrible).
The limitation of mini-ITX and small PCs is it can be difficult to sqeeze in an extra graphics card. With that in mind, we’ve gone with some of the best onboard graphics available, the Nvidia 9300. And instead of using a dual core Atom processor, we’re fitting it with a new Pentium Dual Core E6300 Processor, with 2 x 2.8GHz CPUs, FSB of 1066Mhz, and 2MB of L2 Cache. http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLGU9
Combined with 4GB of RAM, that makes this a tiny HTPC that you can actually use for gaming and general multi-tasking. All for just £399 ex VAT.