Pod13,
Sorry it took a while for me to get back to you, but I sunburned the hell out of myself this weekend at Santa Cruz. I should know better than to buy the cheap sunblock on sale at Walgreens.
You might want to go look at the article at
http://www.extremetech.com that was posted today on building a htpc. They are building an ultimate htpc, way beyond what I want to pay.
I know that going with a pentium might help with the heat problem, but all my other computers (2) are AMD, so I'm thinking of buying a 2600+ XP cpu to replace a 2000+ XP I already have. Plus the AMD motherboards tend to be a bit cheaper. I'm not planning any overclocking, so there should be no heat problem.
The M-Audio card is an excellent choice. I'm thinking of going with the onboard sound of the nForce2 until I get a few more bucks for the M-Audio.
I'm planning to use the ATI AIW 9000 Pro, acording to what I have read, it does everything I need. including time shifting. I need to look into this a bit more.
So far, I have just ordered the case from Directron. I'll probably get the rest of the stuff from Newegg.
I already have the shuttle MN31N mobo in my cart, and a xp 2600+. I'm agonizing over which hard drive to go with, either Maxtor or WD. I don't think I need a SATA hard drive for this type of application, but I could be wrong there. I have a WD 80gb drive now , and it is very quiet, but I have heard the Maxtors are also very quiet. I've been looking at the Maxtor 120 GB hard drives. The price jump from 120 to 160 gb is still quite a bit.
I am also going to add the same Sony DVD recorder. I think it will almost be a requirement, especially after I just read an article on how to copy DVD's.
I'm still working on this thing, and gradually deciding on the parts as I go, as you can tell.
Tim