I currently have a contracter building my new house, but I will be doing the audio/video wiring. On the main floor I will have a wall mounted LCD tv with the audio/video components below it. But no dedicated HTPC.(that will be in the basement) I will though, have a "family" pc in the kitchen that I would like to connect to this TV to play music as well as video including 1080p content. The cable length from the pc to the amp would be 45 feet.

Now the questions:

1) I will need to buy a video card for this PC. What should I buy? Not brand, but what features/outputs should it have? I will need to be able to switch between the monitor(DVI) and TV(HDMI?). Does this pose a problem. My existing HTPC video card has s-video, vga and DVI output. I adapt the DVI to HDMI and run it straight to the plasma. The audio is optical to the amp. So this is the only experience/knowledge I have with video cards.

2) Is 45 feet to long for a HDMI cable? I have read a lot of posts about this, but I haven't found a clear cut answer. (maybe there isn't one)

3) I think conduit is the way to go to allow for future requirments. What would you recommend the minimum diameter size for the conduit be to make fishing in the cable(s) easier?

4) Would you terminate the HDMI cable to a wall jack, or just leave the conduit open and connect the cable directly to the equipment? Or does it matter?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

I have an htpc with a video card that has hdmi..there is a little port on the card you connect to the digital port on the motherboard and it sends digital sound through the hdmi...works very well..I can't remember what card it is..a nvidia 7900 series I believe..

I didn't have to configure anything w/it really either...I just plugged it into my tv..and it worked perfectly...

45' hdmi run shouldn't be too bad if you use a quality cable

I have multiple htpc thru out the house. The only one with a video card is the family room one which connects to the tv thru component. The others just uses the builtin hdmi video card from the nforce 7100 motherboard. Depends on your usage, you might need a video card. What I found is if you purchase a fast enough cpu, it will make up for the video as well. I found a 3ghz Core 2 will play anything 1080p perfectly.

If you do intend to use a video card, look into the ATI 3450, 3650, 46xx series. They do very good hardware acceleration.