As we started the builds around which this story is based, we hit two immediate (and strongly related) roadblocks - namely, "space available" and graphics card options. As a quick glance at the 8800 card we were sent illustrates, it's an incredibly bulky card that covers up to three motherboard expansion slots. This quickly knocked smaller home theatre/compact desktop cases like the Antec NSK2400 out of contention, even though Nvidia sent us a very nice system build inside one, because when we seated an 8800 in the PCI-e x16 slot, no further room was available for expansion cards. Thus, our first conflict came from the size of this graphics card versus our desire to seat two TV capture/playback cards in our builds.

This also made us realize that micro-ATX motherboards may not be big enough to accommodate all the interface cards we might want to put into them. Though other DIY builders may decide that using USB for SDTV and HDTV video is okay, we decided to let our desire to use PCI video cards steer us into the case we used for our test builds - namely, the Silverstone LaScala 14M, which left enough room for our 7600 video card along with both TV capture/playback cards. Here again, we couldn't fit the 8800 at our disposal (an eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB) into the machine with enough room left over to accommodate both video cards in this case. That led to our abandoning the 8800 for our DIY set-up, though a preliminary viewing of its video output produced pretty stellar and surprisingly quiet results. Subsequent investigation of the card showed it lacked HDMI/HDCP support anyway, but the necessity for expansion cards trumped its unsuitability for this test!

Another problem surfaced as we sought test HD-DVD drive units for our build. Except through an OEM connection, we were unable to lay our hands on an internal HD-DVD player through normal retail channels (our drive came courtesy of the folks at Nvidia, who sent us an already built system with both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players installed, which we cheerfully cannibalized for our DIY builds). This definitely makes the Microsoft Xbox 360 external USB-attached HD-DVD player a potential "best buy" for those who wish to play such media back - though we haven't been able to test its compatibility with HDMI output from a PC as yet (all reports about audio, our primary source of concern, appear to be positive). We also can't help but keep thinking that however attractive the uber-expensive hybrid LG HD-DVD/Blu-ray player might be for convenience' sake, its high cost and inability to play conventional CDs make it a poor substitute for a system with one optical drive of each kind. With one of each in place (and remember, HD-DVD players can play conventional CDs) you will spend quite a bit less and get more functionality.