[iBLeeDBaTTLeReD]

I am not familiar with PC building or anything of that sort. I'm basically a youtube watch and learn guy when it comes to tech devices and such. I stumbled upon this XBMC program on another site I frequent where people were showing off their Home Theatre setups. So my question is what is the best way to go for a regular joe like myself. Speed performance and HD video compatibility are my main needs, I really don't want all the extra bells and whistles. Just something that is historically reliable, will have long term support, easy to use, and again HD compatible. This will only be used for XBMC video viewing on a Samsung LED Smart TV.

Stumbled across this cool looking NES PC on Craigslist and was wondering what you guys think of the specs and is it worth the $375 pricetag for something I will only use XBMC on :

NES PC - A true computer in a old classic NES case. Powered by Intel Celeron 847 1.1GHz, 4GB of memory, and one of the best SSD, Samsung 840 120GB, plus HDMI, 4x USB2.0, Fast Internet. Windows 7 and Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) installed. The original Power and Reset buttons and, the NES red light are still working!
We currently use it for watch cartoon with my kids (1080p). I am ready to do another project, so I am selling this one.
--> 375$ Let me know if you have any question.

[SDub]

I think what you'll find is that most people in this particular forum use set top boxes to run XBMC. This solution is much cheaper than the one you offered up, are small form factor, but don't come with an ODD (ability to play DVDs/Blurays), and they also often don't have space to install SSDs/HDDs. So, if your plan is to throw media onto your set top box, this solution probably isn't the best for you.

Since you're new to XBMC and maybe not aware of all of its' bells and whistles, you might want to review them so that if you spend some money now, you will know exactly what XBMC can do, and what you want it to personally do. The reason why I recommend this is because I didn't know what I wanted my XBMC box to do certain things until I knew it was capable of doing it, haha.

To give you a general feature list:
1. Media playback of a whole variety of video files and musical files - scrapes media and displays it in a pretty way
2. DVD/Bluray (via external player) support
3. Remote support
4. Live PVR support
5. Ability to have the stuff on your XBMC box remotely available

Those are all the hardware-limiting features I can think about right now. Think of a few of these and maybe scrounge around for the full list of features you may want your XBMC box to support so we make the correct decision now and you don't end up disliking a year from now or so.