Building a home entertainment system

[djdoomsday]

Hiya, i'm looking into buying an entire home entertainment system. The whole shebang.
Plasma TV (HDTV)
5.1 Surround sound
HD tuner (if not with TV)
Recording device
Foxtel (pay TV)

Now i can do my own research on most of that, but what i'm stuck on is the recording device. I'd like to setup a media center PC, but i'll also have idiots watching the TV too so if it requires some sort of thought to use then its probably not a good idea. What i really want is a device that'll rip video to a HDD.

Any thoughts on the matter would be great.

[anonymez]

get a pci digital tv tuner card, preferably something BDA/MCE compatible-- media center apps like 'mytheater' and 'mediaportal', not to mention 'windows media center' are quite idiot-proof

[techreactor]

Hiya, i'm looking into buying an entire home entertainment system. The whole shebang.
Plasma TV (HDTV)
5.1 Surround sound
HD tuner (if not with TV)
Recording device
Foxtel (pay TV)

Now i can do my own research on most of that, but what i'm stuck on is the recording device. I'd like to setup a media center PC, but i'll also have idiots watching the TV too so if it requires some sort of thought to use then its probably not a good idea. What i really want is a device that'll rip video to a HDD.

Any thoughts on the matter would be great.

You might wanna check out Htguide.com or Audioholics.com as a more dedicated resource for HTS and Digital displays.

[djdoomsday]

Great, thanks mate.