Choosing your hardware
From YourSupportStoreWiki
Now picking out your hardware can be kind of tricky.
You have to start with the case. Your chases will define your entire system.
you want to pick one that you are wiling to look at on your entertainment center for many years.
The motherboard and proc need to be the latest on the market. also make sure it will fit in your chases. get as much ram as your motherboard can handle.
You will need a good tv Tuner card. I don't know of any analog cards that do not work. for digital cards, I use Haupauge's WinTV-HVR-1600 and that woks great. I compile the drivers my self but they should be available in kernel 2.6.26 and later.
if you use more than one tv tuner its probably best to creat a script like I did that loads each tuner in the correct order. its easier to create the script if you are using 2 different brands of tuners so you are not loading the same kernel module for each card.
for IR receivers my preference is the generic USB IR receiver.
now for your graphics card, There are 3 major brands Nvidia, ATI, and Intel. for All of them I compile the drivers myself. this is because I have always gotten better performance by doing this.
My favorite is Nvidia but I do use all 3.
