i3 would be needed if you are doing CPU-intensive tasks. The early word we have seen so far is that the Sandy Bridge Pentiums look good as far as the core HTPC playback functionality is concerned. If you are doing something like commercial skip analysis or 2D to 3D conversion, something with more CPU horsepower would be a better choice. The Pentiums also lose out on Quick Sync that is in the i3 and up, but you have not specified transcoding as something you’ll be doing.
