For video, I think the hands-down solution is an extra stripped-down windows/mac box, hardwired preferably via ethernet to your big HDDs.
However for audio, a less obvious but elegant solution can be to get a soundcard (or motherboard, such as some of the Soyo's) that has optical SPDIF audio out. Then get a USD$100 used "dolby digital stand-alone decoder" (I have one made by Marantz, and it works great) to hook up the optical out to. This has the advantage of both avoiding practically _all_ grounding/humm issues, and letting you do 5.1channel AC3 out from your computer if you want (from a DVD or otherwise).
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For video, I think the hands-down solution is an extra stripped-down windows/mac box, hardwired preferably via ethernet to your big HDDs.
However for audio, a less obvious but elegant solution can be to get a soundcard (or motherboard, such as some of the Soyo's) that has optical SPDIF audio out. Then get a USD$100 used "dolby digital stand-alone decoder" (I have one made by Marantz, and it works great) to hook up the optical out to. This has the advantage of both avoiding practically _all_ grounding/humm issues, and letting you do 5.1channel AC3 out from your computer if you want (from a DVD or otherwise).