first time building a media pc and i wanna scope out the hardware before i buy it and make sure it works with knoppmyth.
so i wanted to know what the best setup is for video and tv tuner cards, if i should get a sound card or just use on board sound..aslo i was wondering what the specs where with the pc like how many shows i can record at once and when recording (x) number of shows can i still watch live tv etc. some info on that..thank you some muich in advanced

You can record or watch live one concurrent program per tuner card. With one card for example you can watch a previously recorded show while recording another, or watch "live" TV but not record. With two cards you can record two shows and watch a recording, or watch "live" TV and record one other show. ... A TV with multiple inputs or an external switching box or an AV reciever will also let you fall back to other input sources even if all the cards are busy. (BTW - If you're stuck with a cable box, it will restrict how many channels you can access at the same time.)

Video uses lots of disk space, the very popular PVR-250 and 350 cards typically use 2.2Gb per hour of video. Buy the biggest drive that isn't bleeding edge expensive that you can (typically 200-250Gb), the advantage to this is that you also usually end up paying less per Gb that way ($0.50/GB or less is good).

You don't need tons of CPU horse power, and 512 Mb or RAM is plenty.

I highly recomend that you go over to the tier 1 and 2 topics and scan the posts there. On a project like this there's no substitue for personal research.

I would really recommend the Hauppauge PVR250 TV card. It works instantly with knoppmyth and has great picture quality. Also, it doesn't strain your cpu much so in the future you can put a second one in.

As the video card, go for a nVidia with tv-out. ATI has better quality, but no (read: sucky) linux support.

The Hauppauge PVR-250 is an excellent tuner card. You can't go wrong with it. I ended up buying the AverMedia m179 tuner card. It is very similar to the PVR-250 and is actually quite a bit cheaper. The m179 is much harder to find, but if you want to save yourself some money then I would try to find one. If you are interested in getting the m179, let me know. I should be able to find one for you.

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ASUS Pundit AB-P2600
Intel P4 2.0 GHz
512 MB RAM
Maxtor 40 GB HD
Compaq DVD-Rom
2 AverMedia m179's
ATI Remote Wonder
KnoppMyth R4V5