More thoughts on this:
– Have been experimenting with XEN, and it turns out that the server CPU (Athlon64 3700+) doesn’t have hardware virtualization built in. However, the desktop (Athlon64 X2 4000+) does.
No Hardware virtualization means that a special kernel is required for the OS to run, which excludes Windows as being one of the OSs. Not that it’s a problem, but it would have made the initial switch, easier, since the BeyondTV software could be ran and setup easily.
– The reason XEN is attractive is because it allows for PCI devices to be dedicated to certain XEN environments, which means even under virtualization, I can use pci devices in the VM environments.

I think the simple solution is to buy Socket939 CPU with virtualization, and call it a day.
UPDATE: Or just use the Athlon64 X2 4000+ machine. I can always upgrade the socket 939 box later and probably for cheaper. Besides, the Asus M2N-E mobo with the x2 CPU has more PCI slots (3 in total)

I’ve tried to make things work on a budget, but for $60 I can get a dual core cpu that will do the trick. Much easier to spend the small amount then to spend endless hours trying to get software modified…

I think the decision is clear.