HTPC pet project

[pikaporeon]

Hi, I'm moving out soon and have already decided I'll be doing without cable, as I have a large repository of media on my computer to begin with and I don't watch much live tv anyway. I figured I'd build a little linux box to play with / hook up to my tv as a media manager.

Part of this is wanting to play with Arch Linux, so I was wondering what video cards would provide the least resistance to working for me, while not choking on 1080p content. Also is there anything in terms of hardware I should avoid just in case?

Finally are there any software does and donts you guys would suggest? I'll likely be throwing a window manager (probably fluxbox) on the system to get at a browser for streams that aren't coming from my other pc, but if one of the random media centres out there might be a better call i'm certainly interested as long as I can access stuff like youtube or justin.tv