I am about to embark on a new install and am looking to make it as painless as possible. All I want to do is record one show at a time and or watch live tv (not at the same time) on a television screen. The input will be from a satellite tv box so an ir blaster would be a must too. Does anyone have any PVR card, sound card, and ir blaster hardware recommendations that are known to work well with KnoppMyth, meet my requirements and require little fussing to get up and running? Thanks in advance for any help.

We have whole sections dedicated to known working hardware configurations:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=9
Here is a page from the wiki on Picking Components:
http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php? ... Components
Lots of folks around here even list their working systems in their signatures...

Sounds like you need a small relatively low spec. machine with a PVR-150 (non-MCE), there are recent write ups about how to get the blaster that comes with that working as well as how to get it working with S-Video input from an external tuner box (satellite or cable).