Updated the HTPC today. I had been using the onboard graphics solution which had component out to my HDTV. When I first built the computer I had always intended to add a discrete graphics card. At one time I had an NVIDA card that also had component HD out, but I found that the onboard graphics actually had better saturation and contrast.
So that worked fine, until last year when Netflix updated their DRM for instant viewing, and I was unable to watch instant movies on the HTPC without a HDCP compliant video card. At the time most HDCP cards were well over $100, so while it sucked to only be able to watch instant movies on my laptop, I decided to wait for awhile to see if any cards came down in price. (Ok I was told by Tracie to wait for a while to see if cards came down in price!)
Fast forward to now and I finally got around to check out what HDCP compliant cards are out there. To my surprise I found the choice out there now to be almost overwhelming! I have always liked ASUS, in fact the motherboard in the HTPC is an ASUS M2NPV-VM, and as I said its integrated graphics outperformed that old NVIDIA card. Also as a Canuck I have always been biased to the ATI cards, even though they are owned by AMD now. I have always felt that when it comes to games NVIDIA usually has the edge, but for TV, video and HD applications, ATI is where its at.
I picked up the ASUS EAH4550 card from NewEgg.com. It is a low profile, HDCP compliant card based on the ATI HD 4550. It has VGA, DVI and HDMI out, and all for about $45 after rebate! My HTPC is such a hack right now, that I’m always leery about changing anything on it because that usually means that something else will break. I’m still running XP on that machine, because Vista just can’t get all the components working together. Well I installed the card, attached the HDMI cable to the TV and booted her back up.
Everything worked the first time! I was so disappointed! 
There was one small hiccup. After installing the drivers I noticed that any audio for video went through HDMI cable instead of the audio out to home theater amp. After disabling the HDMI audio, everything worked as it should. The picture quality is amazing, and the contrast and detail over the component video is like night and day. Why did I wait so long to do this?! Oh that’s right Tracie!
But the best part is Netflix on demand works again. And now that they are adding more and more HD content, the card will be able to handle all that onboard, without offloading that the CPU.
While its not a gaming card, I hope to try a few out to see how it handles them. Nothing better that killing a few Nazis on the big screen!