The rest of the hardware for your HTPC
Memory:
Get what your motherboard maker recommends only based on speed, manufacturer's aren't as important unless you over clock your system, which you shouldn't be doing to a HTPC that you don't watch closely. For a 400Mhz (or 800Mhz if your motherboard has a double FSB) PC3200 is all you need. PC3500 and up is only for people who are overclocking, or if Intel or AMD releases a FSB faster than 800Mhz. Note, If you're using an Intel P4 motherboard that has a 800Mhz FSB, remember you need _two_ ram chips to get the 800FSB. Each ram chip is good for 400Mhz. If you want 512MB total memory get 2 256MB chips for the best performance. Make sure you know the difference between the different speeds of memory. Basically:
*Note the x2 is when using ddr
266FSB (133x2) = PC2100
333FSB (166x2) = PC2700
400FSB (200x2) = PC3200 * AKA 800FSB When using 2 ram chips on P4's
435FSB (217x2) = PC3500 * For when overclocking
466FSB (233x2) = PC3700 * For when overclocking
500FSB (250x2) = PC4000 * For when overclocking
Motherboard:
All motherboard makers have at least one motherboard that is junk. This is where your warranty can become very important. There is nothing worse than spending two weekends working to find out a motherboard has a hardware conflict with another expensive piece of hardware and is impossible to resolve. Asus, Intel, Shuttle, Gigabyte, AOpen, Abit, Chaintech and Epox brands typically have stable motherboards, but not always. Try to find a motherboard that has an NForce or Intel chipset on it. NForce chipsets are a good choice because they are well supported under Linux and some have on board DD/DTS audio via Coaxial and TOSLINK (Optical) outputs. As for VIA chipsets I've had pure nightmares with them on almost every motherboard. VIA makes good embedded systems but I won't touch their motherboard chipsets again. My current example is you can't enable AMD's athlon powersaving without the KT400 VIA Chipset having system BUS problems that often starve process resources, such as recording HDTV.
Other features of a motherboard that you need to consider are serial ATA, Firewire/1394, USB 2.0, and the number of PCI slots. Serial ATA will replace ATA 133 one day as it boasts transfer rates of 150+MB/s, but that's just marketing. This faster data transfer rate is only useful if information has already been read from the disk, so the average transfer rate will be about 30MB/s, same as ATA 133. Serial ATA also uses less power which can be an important plus for HTPC users. Serial ATA drives will probably not become cheaper for the same disk size until 2005. If you do use serial ATA, just realize that the that you will be paying a bit more for future compatibility. One nice thing about serial ATA is that you can buy a PCI serial ATA card for $500 right now that supports eight drives, but that's expensive.
Firewire/1394 is an interface that allows you to connect devices such as external hard drives, cameras, CD burners, etc. If you have a device that uses firewire you probably want to consider getting it on board or at least a PCI card that supports it. USB 2.0 is the newest USB technology and it is included on most motherboards. If your motherboard does not support it then don't buy that motherboard (The motherboard is outdated and is probably missing other useful features). Most motherboards also have 5 or 6 PCI slots. If you aren't able to get on board DD/DTS sound, on board networking, or on board 1394 you may only have 2 slots left for TV Tuner cards. I have 3 HDTV tuner cards, a sound card, and a PCI IDE card so my PCI bus is filled and I couldn't add anything else even if something cool comes out. If you only have 2 (or 6) PCI slots, you need to be aware that you may not be able fit everything you want into a certain motherboard.
Finally, you get what you pay for. Saving a few bucks could mean countless hours of wasted time just to find out the one feature you really need isn't included on your motherboard. Google is your friend for finding out, but don't just read the good notes, look for any bad ones. Everyone's a critic.
Network Card:
Most on board (On your motherboard) network cards work. If you don't have on board networking and will not reconsider my advice to find one that does, I recommend Netgear cards as they are cheap and very compatible. 100Mb/s should always be used.
Wireless Networking:
I know many of you don't want to hear this, but don't do it. Not even G with 54Mb or 108Mb cards/AP's People have tried, over and over, it does not work well, even for SD TV viewing. Music over the network does work well though using NFS or better yet SFS
Keyboard
Being as it is still a computer, you will need a keyboard and mouse, even if you plan on using a remote. Many people go for wireless keyboards and mice. I recommend going with a keyboard with a built in mouse pointer (KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid). A good example is the ~$20 Lite-On IR keyboard from with thumb mouse from newegg.com. A mouse should be rarely used for a HTPC so a somewhat more difficult thumb mouse is plenty good.
Remote
Not all remotes are created equal. I tried the LIRC route and didn't like having to do all the mapping to keys, dealing with kernel drivers, and so on, it's just not simple (read my section on it). What I recommend is getting a learning remote and an IR keyboard that the remote can learn it's codes. I had mixed results with doing this too. The $20 cheap learning remote would learn about 8-12 keys before it wouldn't understand any more codes. What happened was the keyboard sent out 32bit, 48bit and 64bit IR codes. The learning remote won't let you do more than one length of code. I found which keys were what length and ended up using the 32 bit codes to get the most usable keys. The downside was I had to use p to get the menu, ' to select, e to fast forward.. you get the point. So I found a remote that took various length IR codes at the same time.
A friend of mine owns the Sony AV-RM 3000 commander. They run about $70 online. This is a great remote (see my review) and it worked very well for my IR keyboard (Which is note as good as the Lite-On keyboard).
Joysticks/Game Controllers
Most of these work out of the box with the 2.6 kernel. If I want, I can configure myth to let me use my joystick for menu control... Not a whole lot to say here.
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