Laptops as HTPCs

I know Zotac makes something similar to what I am talking about, but wouldn't most laptops with a broken display (or no display at all) with an HDMI out and decent GPU make for great HTPCs?

The HTPC market must not be large enough, because I see a ton of $300-400 laptops that would work quite well as HTPCs. Why couldn't they just turn the laptop base into a great, slim, and mostly silent HTPC? Just get rid of the display, keyboard, and mouse. A pretty simple case redesign would make it aesthetically pleasing. You would think that getting rid of those would decrease cost of production and we could feasibly have $200 super slim HTPCs with actually powerful, low TDP processors.

Just food for thought. Maybe some people on here who have converted some laptops into HTPCs can discuss the pros/cons.

My friend saw me use xbmc and he loved it. He wanted a laptop that could play 1080p over HDMI to his TV and I told him to buy a Toshiba Satellite L775D .... he bought a silver that costed him $500 it was on SALE.
The laptop has a Quad-Core A6-3400M....

I installed XBMC and tested....

Plugged to my TV.....

WOW!

Plays flawless.....

con for me: wont be possible to power it on using IR Remote
unless it has a fancy WAke from S5 feature....