Great article, I was wondering how one can compare HTPC capabilities. Do you just try a slew of cards playing blue ray and see if it skips?
Hope you don't mind if I jump in here...
You do pretty much have to test these boards; especially the low end ones. You can filter this down a lot by looking for cards that specifically say they are rated for "1080p" which is 1920 X 1080 resolution at 60 hz vertical refresh.
But it's not always the video card that bottle necks an HTPC... Sometimes it's the CPU being too slow (1.6ghz or better recommended), sometimes it's the disk drives (SATA drives running in AHCI mode is a must) and sometimes it's the software itself...
On the software front I've gone to quite a few "professional" installations that were stuttering and burbling on MKV and FLAC files and the problem was cleared up by getting rid of Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player and replacing it with one of the better free players out there... My personal choice is Media Player Classic Home Cinema edition... never seen it disappoint yet, but it does take a little setting up.
I've also seen OS issues (stuff in the background usually) cause problems. Norton Security is the worst but just about any background virus scanner or auxiliary firewall can steal CPU cycles at a critical moment... For HTPC use I generally shut down everything except the core OS functions and networking.
Of all Windows OSs, XP seems to do the best job in the HTPC environment and it is strongly favored by "Computer Audiophiles" as giving the best sound reproduction available.
I don't know much about Linux, so no recommendations there...
Hope this helps.
