Multimedia home network

[dfs]

Events in my life are conspiring that my family will be moving and at the same time we may have some spare cash.

Wife, self, two kids. We currently are a 4 computer family in name, but all of the machines are desperately in need of an upgrade. In addition I currently have broadband on a single computer and then a seperate home lan segment. I intend to replace all that with a wireless network leading to a broadband connection.

I'm thinking about ways to turn the PC's on the network into multi-media stations and this is new ground for me. I'm trying to think about what to buy in order to be happy with this stuff for 5 years or so and replace as many "appliances" as I can with a PC.

I've got software to create mp3's from my cd's and winamp can turn each computer into a jukebox with customized playlists. Depending on the broadcast Internet radio is essentially free with broadband. There are several alarm clock software applications.

I can play DVD's from a machine with a DVD drive. How can I access regular cable ? Overtstock has "Internal PCI TV Tuner Video Capture with Remote" that seems to do the job. Any problems with that? Any good reason you can't quickly turn your pc into a Tivo like unit with a bit of home hacking?

My cable company is providing phone service. Anybody gone that way?

What am I forgetting that would be really cool? Basically if you were a kid(11,12), what would you consider to be a tricked out PC? As a dad, what would you do censor what your kids could do/see.

Thanks.

[Zekester]

You'd have to start out with a video capture card, either a seperate PCI card or a All-In-Wonder video card.

ATI has a 7500-based video card that has a bunch of multimedia features, although I don't really know how ATI's drivers are these days.
They were sorta buggy in the past.

You'd also need a fairly fast machine to do TIVO-like duties, and lots of hard drive space.