10. Tuners, Continued

I selected the ATI HDTV Wonder for my HDTV tuner card. HDTV broadcasts are absolutely amazing to look at and ATI's tuner card brings it flawlessly to the HTPC. Keep in mind that PC HDTV tuners do not support QAM digital decoding, which means that they are only able to decode over-the-air high definition TV. Digital cable and satellite will not work with these cards so standard definition cards are still a necessity.

The HDTV wonder came bundled with an HD antenna and a remote wonder plus remote. I found that a robust signal is necessary to avoid video distortion while watching HDTV. I had to move the antenna all over my house before I was able to get consistently smooth video output. I ended up threading about 100 feet of coax cable throughout my house to get the antenna to an area with a strong enough signal.

ATI HDTV Wonder OTA High Definition TV tuner

Remote

I purchased a Microsoft Media Center remote to go with Windows XP Media Center Edition. The range of the Microsoft remote is impressive and it comes with an excellent RF receiver. I rarely need to point the remote directly at the receiver in order to use it. Using a remote that was built specifically for the Media Center software was the ideal choice. There was no need for extra buttons, third-party software or elaborate key mapping to get it to work. I merely needed to plug in the IR receiver and I was good to go. I was also able to program the power and volume buttons to control my TV directly, which was very convenient.

The Microsoft Media Center Remote