Windows Media Center / HDTV Setup?

[Wildfyre]

Here is my dilemma,

My current set up in the living room is a TW HDDVR (SA8300), DTS Receiver, and HDTV. Love it so far. But I've noticed on my computer there's an awful lot of content showing up posted in HD - via the newsgroups. So this lead me to wonder - should I build a media center PC for the Living room.

Couple questions
1) If I build a media center PC with two HD tuners does that replace the DVR? Do I also really need an analog tuner in it?

2) Has anyone had experience playing content posted to the alt.binaries.hdtv group to their HDTV? Work good? I was thinking as long as I have a card that can output via component cables (like my ATI X800 Pro) I should be good to go using the digital out on the sound card to the receiver, correct?

3) I'm also thinking that I might only want some PC out there to network to my main one and be able to just play the content... In that case I just need a CPU/MEM/CASE/DRIVE/VIDCARD/Soundcard and network it in...

Anyone done this? Is it worth it?

[waterhead]

:OnAir: Here's the scoop.

If you go with Microsoft Media Center Edition 2005, you must have separate analog and digital tuners. The digital tuner will not work all by itself.

The PC based HDTV tuners are only needed to receive (and watch) live, over the air signals, they don't tune in cable HDTV.

You don't need a HDTV tuner to watch recorded HD programs. I don't know anything about downloaded HD content. Download one and try to play it.

I have heard that you may not be able to have dual tuner cards if both of them are software decoders (or is it encoders, I get them mixed up). HDTV content is already MPEG-2, so it doesn't have to be encoded, it is just copied to your hard drive

As for recording on one pc and watching on another, this is usually referred to as a backend (server) and a frontend (viewer). I can do this on my home "windows" LAN, but usually just watch from the box that I recorded it on. Mythtv can run this way.
Also I think the program BeyondTVlink (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtvlink/) works this way. I have plain BeyondTV4, and I can't get a good HD picture from it. You can download a trial version before you buy it:BeyondTV4 (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/)

There is a free program, Media Portal: Media Portal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/)