William George over at Puget Custom Computers has an excellent walkthrough of Windows Media Center Edition. It's a bit long, but if you're choosing between home PVR setups and considering MCE, it's definitely worth taking the time to scroll through.
The article also includes some interesting tips for putting together hardware for a home theater PC. For example, since you probably want a TV tuner that has hardware encoding functions and you'll have a video card that handles most of the playback, you don't need to worry so much about getting a blazing-fast CPU. And since you probably will only be running MCE most of the time, you don't need a ton of RAM for multitasking. Considering that this guide was written for a computer sales site, it's nice to see such advice.
Of course, as anyone who's ever put together a home theater PC knows, the big ticket items will be your TV tuner card(s), video card, hard drive, and possibly case. Personally I've never seen the need for a HTPC case to sit in the living room, as my machine is under my desk in the office anyway, but you can easily spend anywhere from $75 to $500 or more on a case alone.
