Hi all, and first off thanks to any who take the time to read/help me on this!

I have built a few high-end gaming computers and workstations, know what I am doing and enjoy the work- now am hoping to go for an all-out media center for myself.  However, I am runing into a few difficulties that help would be MOST appreciated on.

My basic idea is this:

1) A solid PC to run EVERYTHING from
2) two monitors- one large plasma/other for watching movies, playing games, etc, and the other monitor would be a touch screen, mounted on a wall, to control the entire setup from
3) Need to be able to: play BlueRay DVDs/regular DVD, music, Cable and HD Cable, games directly from, and also have some method of hooking up an auxiliary device (ie Xbox, PS3, etc) to play into the system

Now, what I have put together so far is this:
-Very nice Antec HTPC case (can't go wrong with those guys)
-780G Chipset mobo (power for mostly basic gaming and BD playback, eSATA, discrete HDMI, DVI, and VGA outputs)
-1TB/whatever is on sale, RAID for data security
-Haupagge sound card with Optical In and Out, plus Analog Out (for passing through sound from auxiliary, ie xbox)
-currently, just a basic logitech 7.1 speaker setup
-touch screen monitor
-37-46" 1080p display

Obviously, playing a movie/music/games from the comp into the screen and sound system is no biggy, the problem comes in when I need to:

-hook up an Xbox/other: will my idea to use the Haupagge Optical In+Video directly into TV work? or will it be laggy?
-watch HD/regular Cable TV: I've read about these cable cards, etc- can somebody give me a basic definition of when I would need 'em, and why?
-And most of all: get the the touchscreen to work with the main screen?  Obviously, setting up dual monitors is simply, but is there a special mode/whatnot of Vista Media Center that might allow me to set that screen to ALWAYS ONLY display media content, and the touchscreen to ALWAYS ONLY display interactive/controls?  I want this to be a slick set up- no dragging over the movie image, clicking maximize, then play then waiting for the bars to go away...etc.  Just work!

A good friend who I work with pretty much told me "idiot, just get a reciever to run all that through to fix the aux in problems"- which i could comprimise on, but rather  not :(  less systems in the loop would make me happy!  However, I'm geussing the software issue is going to be the toughest.  Perhaps there is a custom-built Ubunto-type OS that does nothing but what I am envisioning? It would seem so to me.

Thanks again everybody for any input on this idea!!

You're out of luck with HD cable, dude. You have to buy a prebuilt, certified cablecard enabled Vista PC. There are a few manufacturers to buy from, but you can't build it yourself. Then you have to rent the cablecard for a couple bucks a month from your cable company.
The basic definition is, you can't watch HD, digital cable without it. So you're stuck with RCA analog out from the digital cable box to your tv tuner.

arrg, well, it was a try- well, living without HD Cable would be acceptable, or I could just route it directly into the TV.  I'll survive somehow, I'm not a big TV watcher anyway.

Also, I've decided to just go ahead and get a reciever to run the PC/others through...just much more realistic/less expensive.

Thanks for the utterly straight-up, no nonsense info on CableCard!

I know you're thinking VMC, but as an alternative option have you considered SageTV with a Hauppauge HD-PVR?  You could access those same channels as you could with a CableCard with nearly the same picture quality and wouldn't need to buy a pre-built PC.  And there is a TouchScreen Interface plugin that many are using in SageTV as I type this.

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Geek Tonic Blog
http://www.geektonic.com

Follow me on Twitter
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Touch screen interface for SageTV? what's this? sounds good!

Thanks everybody :)

yahodahan:

Touch screen interface for SageTV? what's this? sounds good!

Thanks everybody :)

It's a plugin for SageTV written by one of the SageTV user/developers.  You can check it out here

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Geek Tonic Blog
http://www.geektonic.com

Follow me on Twitter
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Whoa, I didn't think to recommend SageTV. Highly recommended!

Sage is a great piece of kit, if you gear will work... I sadly have a capture card that works in VMC but not.

TCO is to high for extenders, software, etc etc.

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My VMC setup:
(2) Xbox360s
System 1 -
Dell XPS410 (2.6Ghz C2D, 2GB Ram,Nvidia 8600GT, Blu-ray internal, HD-DVD external (X360 drive), (2) Vboxx DTA150s (OTA HD), Adaptec Dual Tuner (fed a steady diet of DirecTV... sadly NOT in HD)