Me and my dad want a system to hook up to our TV. Something we can play DVDs on (Blue Ray not required, but a plus), surf the internet on and hook up our speakers to, for music and better movie experiences.
My mom has a Mac Mini hooked up at her place, which works pretty well. But we thought we might try something else. Especially since I was finally able to convince him Mac doesn't always have a good price to performance ratio.

So, does anyone know of any suystems that would work for us? I've thought about a PS3 since that seems to have support for mouse and keyboard, but I'm not sure it has a web browser yet.

Any ideas welcome, and I'd like some more info on the PS3 as a multimedia system.

you could try a small form factor PC

like one of these
http://www.thebookpc.com/index.php/cPath/38?osCsid=719931ce406ec791c98c68e4ab5f9462

The ps3 has a web browser, a [censored] one.

Really? That svcks, I hoped to gain a new toy.

I've been looking at those "mini PCs" or whatever. Mainly the Zotac Zbox. However it's quite a lot worse hardware wise than the Mac Mini.
Maybe this is an exception to what I usually see and the Mac is the best option.

1. Build your own

2. Windows Media Center/XBMC/Plex/Boxee depending on your OS and needs

Windows Media Center will allow you to record TV, but, obviously, only works on Windows (and to record TV you need a TV tuner and depending on how you get your premium channels, it may be a little bit of a setup to get those to record).

XBMC is a solid home theater program with a great, skinnable UI (and the other two borrow code from it) and runs on all major platforms.

Plex has a solid PC streaming capability (as in stream your content from other PCs to your HTPC) but the client only runs on Windows/Mac OS X.

Boxee focuses on Internet streaming and social media and runs on Windows/OS X/Linux.

Netflix instant streaming will require Windows or Mac OS X

So telling the exact things you wish to do (all of them) can help narrow down what the best options is.