Week 2 Begins

I just made the mistake of re-reading my postings over the past weel. Don't ever do that to yourself! Man, talk about all over the board! "It's working!"..."It's broken"..."I fixed it"..."It blew up!" Sheesh, it's amazing how one project can be across the entire board like that, so I figured a weekly review might be in order.
Components:

• The case, motherboard, processor and PSU remain the same.
• The video card is in limbo. The initial plan was to go with the NVidia 7600GT from eVGA. After wrestling with that guy for nearly the entire first 24 hours trying different drivers and stuff, it became incredibly ovious that this was 100% a hardware issue. From what I've discovered, eVGA had a bit of a bad batch that came with bad video RAM. So, I sent it back. While I'm waiting for it to go there and back, I went down to Circuit City to get something to put in my box. My initial plan was another 7600GT, however, in the end I decided that I would test out ATI. So, I bought the X1600 Pro with every intention of this just being a rental until my 7600GT comes back. Well, I'm not so sure I want the 7600 back. This is like renting a Viper while your Corvette is in the shop! I'm most certainly going to do some hardcore comparisons when the 7600GT comes back and take it from there.
• The RAM is going back. While I did finally get it working and apparently stable, I'm just a little nervous about it. I've decided that it's just too picky for this implementation, so I've ordered 2GB of Corsair RAM instead. It'll be here tomorrow.

So, the project. The current status of the project is stage 2. It's been moved off the kitchen table, the PC is closed up and running on its own. After what I would conservatively estimate at 30 hours of tinkering this weekend, I've got this baby to the point where I'm comfortable with it's performance, and it's been up and running for nearly a full day. So far I've:

• Updated the OS (Windows patches, etc.)
• Configured both cable boxes with my TV tuner cards.
• Configured the HD Homerun High Definition tuner and populated the guide with the QAM HD channel data.
• Installed and configured DVRMSToolBox. Now, anytime we watch recorded TV, it automatically skips the commercials. This alone is worth all the headaches as it adds HUGE bonus points to the Wife Acceptance Factor score.
• Installed AnyDVD. This is an essential, yet often overlooked piece of the puzzle. Especially if you are planning on ripping DVDs to your hard drive.
• Installed and configured My Movies. Again, a great app for a home theater solution.
• Installed Nero 7 Platinum. I can't say enough about Nero. Great suite for burning DVDs, ripping DVDs, manipulating video, and anything else in the A/V world. Well worth the license price!
• Connected the XBOX 360 as an extender.

I think that's it for now. I've also added an additional 320GB hard drive. I've got another 200 in there as well, bringing me up over 1/2 a TB. Need it for HD recording!