In the near future I plan on hooking up a computer to an HD tv and sound system. My question is what os/programs should I use to make it a simple and effective media player. My idea is to get a media remote I can hook up to a computer that can do play/pause etc. It would nice to have a single media player that can play almost anything. It would nice if I could navigate the media library with the remote so I wouldn't have to resort to the mouse and keyboard every time I wanna watch a movie or change play lists. If anyone knows of something like this or has other ideas or a nice setup of their own please post about it. One more thing, I'm planning on using an AMD 2900+ 2.0 GHz cpu with 1 gig of ram, for now. I also jsut remembered about the os's that are made to do media like xp media center, would one of those be the best option? Lastly I can barely play 720 HD with core avc with a few lags now and then, so I think an os with a low overhead would be best.

I am only familiar with XP and Vista. Both have versions that include a media centre interface. If you are already having trouble playing some content, maybe the XP install would be more suitable. I personally wouldn't use Vista until you have 2gb of ram installed. Configure the media centre program to load on startup. And turn off all the visual effects so they are not draining the resources. Turning the visual effecs will not affect how the media centre program looks, it will still be nice and pretty for you. Any Q's post back!