Looking for low cost baseline media center kit

Hi. I'm a member of a hackerspace here in Louisville and was looking to do a workshop on a very basic media center. I've researched the boards here a little, including renethx's excellent guide on HTPC's

The recommendations are very informative on if I was going to build one for my home, because its worth it to spend a little more to make sure I can do more things (ripping, gaming etc). But I'm looking for a very baseline system.

I've built gaming rigs before and its easy and fun finding high end bang for the buck, but in terms of finding what is needed for a basic system, I don't know what I should be looking for.

We want to keep the workshop price as low as possible to get more participants, so cost is an issue.

Goal of the system will be to:

• Play (up to) 1080p resolution
• Play DVDs
• Play streaming content
• Play audio (Itunes etc) - through a connected speaker system.
• Play encoded/decoded content.

Although the workshop won't include this particular piece, it would be nice if the system can record data from an HD Homerun while playing a recorded show at the same time.

I know how to pick CDROMs, RAM, Cases etc, but the motherboard/cpu combination has me stuck. I'm leaning towards the Intel Celeron E3400, but I am stuck on finding a decent MB with integrated graphics to handle the video.

Any suggestions?

BTW, although it wouldn't be *my* first choice, we will probably do a Linux install for cost reasons.

Thanks.

Thanks assassin, I'll check that out as well (and the guide). Last time I researched the mini ITX systems (Zotac etc) they weren't able to decode some flash. Has that problem gone away?