Hi All,

Back in May I posted interest in building an HTPC, and just now about to place orders and commence work on it.  Just a quick couple of questions:

1)  Has anything changed with Satellite Sky?  Are Gold 1700 series cards still no good with card readers (Omnikey etc)?

2)  If 1700 series cards are useless, then I would at least like to be able to receive sky into the HTPC via composite RCA so we can still pause/record.

3)  Alternatively, if Sky turns out too difficult to capture I would settle for a media box.  With this in mind, are there any cost-effective "pre-branded" boxes which excel over the other (i.e. Boxee, WDTV) that would suffice instead of a full-blown Windows Media Center system?  Or am I better off building a mini-itx system?

Here's what the requirements are:

• DVD Playback
• All file format/codec Playback (WMV, DIVX, x264)
• HD Playback
• Ethernet Connectivity
• Capture DVB-S Sky to Pause/Record TV if possible.

Here's my proposed system:

• Asus E45M1-I DELUXE AMD Fusion APU E-450? or
• Asus E35M1-I DELUXE AMD Fuision APU E-350?
• HVR-2200
• Win 7 x64

Thanks for your input.

P.S. I've taken a stroll through this forum to find this information, but a lot dates back to 2008/2009 with the terms I'm searching, leading to the assumption that the issues still exist. Hence the reason for this post for clarification on the matters :)
- Acropoli

P.P.S.  Search function doesn't seem to appear in Firefox 7.  Works fine in IE 9  (shudder)