I have gotten a few random blue screens in the last few weeks, not replicable, usally during playback.
What is the first thing to look for? Drives?
The machine blue screens and restarts everything is fine. Can continue watching the same video no issue.
I thought heat might be it, but it is cooler now than all summer.
based on your details, i'm guessing either Video card woes or RAM.
To test ram, burn a cd of Memtest86
And to test your Video Card, get a program like 3DMark, and just run it non-stop to stress your card.
Thanks, I will do the memory test and try that for the video card.
This weekend I will crack open the case and check for dust etc.
The machine is an athlon 3000, 1 gig ram, XP SP2 with minimal updates. I am running the most recent version of Sage, most recent Java, an old version of Purevideo and AC3 Filter, and that is about all that is on the PC. It has been running flawlessly for near 3 years now. Only issue was when a recording drive went bad about 2 years ago.
The last bluescreen was during a rapid fast forward then rewind during HD playback, it happened once before about 2 weeks ago (fuzzy on the details) my wife mentioned she got one as well. I know these things don't correct themselves and appreciate the tips.
In the past, older versions of Sage, became somewhat buggy after a while if the HDD wasn't regularly defragged. I dunno if this is still a recurring problem with the latest versions of Sage.
The first thing I do when I get the BSOD is write down the error message. If the system restarts immediately, without giving you time to write it down, do the following:
Right-click My Computer, select Properties.
Select the Advanced tab
Select Settings under Startup and Recovery
Uncheck Automatically restart under System failure
Write down the error message when it happens again. Either Google the error, and/or post it here. One of us might know what's going on from experience. 
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Check your temps anyways.. overtime dust can collect...
In my experience heat, bad ram and bad psu are the major culprits.
What OS? What HTPC software?