A few months back we caught wind of a new $20,000 home theater system in a box from startup SE2 Labs. Yesterday we got to take a look at it. And well, it's a $20,000 home theater system in a box.

Believe it or not, some of the cheapest components in the ITC One are things like a Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and HD-DVD drive. The serious high end stuff in here are the bits you never notice until you listen to your friends' crappy stereo system. SE2 Labs president Michael Pyle points out that the ITC One includes a video scaler that normally sells for $6500, a surround sound processor that goes for $6,000 and amplifiers that cost $5,000.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Pyle says you'd spend closer to $60,000 if you bought all of the components in the ITC One separately. The company keeps the price down by buying just the circuit boards, not the finished products. And the advantage of buying an ITC one is that everything is designed to work together from the home automation system to the video game consoles.

The company plans to ship the ITC One within a month, and will show an updated version at CES with wireless HDMI and wireless powered speakers.

Ever think about the home theater/home automation system you'd set up if you had $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket. Odds are your dream system involves an awful lot of wiring components together until your living room is more fire hazard than theater.

But the SE2 Labs ITC One is a single box with pretty much anything you could ever need. That includes:

• An Xbox 360
• An Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive
• An iPod dock
• AMX automation
• Cable and satellite TV tuners
  
• A surround sound reciever/preamp/amplifier
• PVR with had drive

The whole thing weighs in at 100 to 125 pounds and measures less than 2 feet heigh and about a foot and a half deep. It's like a rack mount system without the rack, although you can mount the entire unit if you really want.

The ITC One is filled with top end components, making the $20,000 starting price a bargain. But we can't help but feel that if you're wiling to get slightly inferior products you could set up a home theater with all the same functionality for a lot less money. Especially considering there's no Blu-Ray deck in there.