[lordkenyon]

Already running HD Content with HW decoding (8600GTS). Only thing I'm going to do is probably add the XBox HD-DVD add on. Probably will hack it up a little to make it internal, but that's the only thing I'll be adding anytime soon. That and an ATSC tuner card to finally dump my DishNetwork for good.

I think the HW solution might be good for some upgrades, but if you're like me and just built a new system, there really isn't a need. It's also a bit ambiguous when you just say "cost effective" PCI solution. Is this under $100, $200, $XX? Building a system as a HTPC, I pretty much expected to have a third or more of the budget be just on a video card.

Oh, running dual core duo 2.33 on P5N SLi MB, the 8600GTS, 2G RAM, 500MB HDD (likely add another soon) with XP Pro SP2. Standard Apps: Media portal, zoom player, QT Alt, ffdshow, CoreAVC, etc.