Need some hardware suggestion. ~$1500

[alpine1]

I need to spend $1500 on a HTPC. I know I'll need 3 tuners and a USB-UIRT, the rest I'm unsure about. Please help.

[Ted the Penguin]

well where do your priorities lie?

how much storage space? (HDD size/count)
how much postprocessing are you going to be doing? (CPU Power)
what do you want it to look like? (Case design)
what kind of TV are you going to be hooking it up to? (GPU power)
where do you live? (NTSC/PAL/BDA tuners)
if you live in the US are you going to be doing ATSC/QAM HDTV? (more tuner specs)
are you going to be supplying any clients with content? (RAM/NIC)

have I asked enough scoping questions? (fun)

and in my sxperience people usually have a pretty good idea of what they want, they just dont say it because they dont know how to articulate it properly. (yay self serving sentences)