Recommend a TV tuner card?

Factual Questions
21

Rather than start a new thread…

I’m about to start building an entertainment rig. Initially I was just going to port sound to the receiver in a room without a television. Graphics were of no concern, as even the lowest level on-board GPU would have been enough to select songs.

But it dawned on me to look into S-video, and I found it can run up to fifty feet. Fishing cable through the walls is a minimal problem, so I got to thinking about the cost of adding a Blu-Ray player and a TV tuner to the box to run HD content to the screen in the den.

I know how to build business machines, I know how to build gaming machines. Media centers – not so much. I still don’t intend to do anything fancy graphics-program wise, so will a nominal tv tuner card work?

How much distance can I get out of an HDMI cable? Does it depend on the graphics card? Do cards come with HDMI outs, of do I need a DVI-VGA adaptor?

Thanks…

Rhythm

22

You may want to look into building a media center based system. You can build a cheap AMD based system, install an OEM copy of vista home premium and purchase an extender and hook THAT up to your TV. You can use either an xbox 360 or a third party extender to control your TV/recording/music/pictures, etc through a wireless (or wired) LAN.