Intel has named the winner of the its Million-Dollar Design Challenge: the Home Theater Lluon "Black Crystal" PC from Trigem Computer. What's it look like? Well, even with this official pic, I'm not quite sure either.

Intel said in September that it would pay $1 million in marketing funds for a cool new design that embodied its Viiv consumer lifestyle PC design. In March, Intel opened the design contest to the people (sort of) allowing consumers sneak peeks at some of the proposed designs.

The problem is that some of the manufacturers opted out of the "People's Choice" awards, because they didn't want to give away their design before it could go to manufacturing. Of course, this basically made a mockery of the whole democratic process, but there you go.

Intel's Ken Kaplan apparently had his blog post vetted by Intel's legal department in explaining what happened: "The rule reads like this: As part of this pre-screen process, Intel will select the ten (10) highest scoring Eligible Submissions ("Finalist Submissions") and make them available to be evaluated by a sub-set of the final panel of judges ("Challenge Judges"). This sub-set of judges will evaluate the screened Finalist Submissions and have the opportunity to add an additional five (5) Eligible Submissions to those selected by Intel. The entire panel of Challenge Judges will then score the Finalist Submissions based upon a set of pre-determined judging criteria."

So what did Trigem win? $300,000 to help offset the costs of enabling the mass production of its grand-prize winning system and up to $400,000 for co-marketing and promotional activities with Intel around the winning system, Kaplan said. The first runner-up winner, Mesiro, will receive up to $300,000 to help offset the costs of enabling the mass production of its winning system.

Intel also announced a new iteration of the contest in Beijing, where they're holding their Intel Developer Forum. Hmmm... So Intel holds a contest in which people can vote, yet the contest is already decided behind the scenes, with no input from the people? And it's being held in China? Please pass the hoisin sauce in which I can dip my delicious irony!