LinuxQuestions.org - Newbie LinuxMCE issues and tv card

Hey everyone...

I'm the first to admit that I am a complete n00b when it comes to Linux, no shame in that. I've been planning a HTPC for a while now and recently saw the LinuxMCE demo vid. I had planned on building a stand alone HTPC while also building a file server (Windows based) but am now considering instead to build a file server (running Linux) and using a PS3 as the front end.

Now there's a few issues I have....

1 - My current pc (which I use for video editing) uses XP and Sony Vegas. Part of the reason I wanted to build a media server in the first place was so I also had a secondary CPU for rendering. As far as I know, to utilise this though, I'd need duplicate installs of XP on both my machine and the server. This conflicts with my plan of also using the media server with LinuxMCE. Someone suggested dual-booting the media server with XP and Linux... but that means I could only do one at a time. ie, I'd either be in XP to rendering or in LinuxMCE

Is there any way possible that I could do both at the same time?

2 - Considering I want to keep XP on this pc... what would be the best way to connect to the Linux server so I could play back the media files (no, not the tv stream) on my pc?

3 - Does this entire plan seem like a pointless task?

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On a different topic,

I was keen on giving it a try on one of the spare hard drives on my current PC and wanted to pick up a cheap usb tv card to use. (ie, the ones going on ebay for like $20)

The only thing stopping me is that I'm assuming it wouldn't be compatible with Linux. I really wanna give it a try before I go ahead with the build but at the moment, money is an issue

Any got any usefull advice?