What's perfect hardware for client?

[heffe2001]

Ok, here's my question. What would be the 'perfect' hardware for small clients, that is inexpensive, small, and requires the least parts you can get by with? I'd like good output quality on Svid, stereo out and possibly digital out. Onboard video/audio is ok, but would like ATI or NVidia, non-shared memory if possible.

I've got a client running on a Via M10000 board, and while it works ok, it only works with overlay, is slow in all menus, and the video skips when video is overlayed with the OSD.

I plan on taking my main server and putting it in a closet with all the tuners & cable boxes, etc, and making a couple more clients to attach to the main system (most likely 4 more in the short term).

How many clients can you reasonably support with 5 tuners on a 100mb network?

I've used Microsoft's MCE2005, with a extender box, and they suggest only at most 5 clients on a 100mb network, I'm assuming that Sage is about the same in bandwidth (depending on recording quality of course, I use 3.5g/hour I believe).