Sean Portnoy over at ZDNet is reporting that Ace Computers is going to be announcing a couple of budget CableCARD PCs at the upcoming CES that will enter the market at only $999…and yes, that does include a tuner!

The LMS 250 will come with 2GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, DVD burner and an internal digital cable tuner. You can choose either an AMD Phenom triple core processor or an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The AMD version will even include 12 USB ports, if that’s something that is important to you, while the Intel version will have 8. You can also add a Blu-Ray drive for an additional $100 (just a wild guess but I’m pretty sure this is not a burner) and another digital cable tuner for $250.

I haven’t really heard much about Ace Computers, especially when it comes to Media Center PCs, but it’s nice to see a smaller manufacturer actually offering a relatively affordable CableCARD option. Usually you have to wait for Dell or HP to have some kind of special to get into a PC of this magnitude for under $1000 so it will be nice to have another option out there.

No word yet on when you can order your LMS 250 but I’m sure something will be announced at CES.