Comment Intel NUC or similar (Score 0) 720
Sounds like you need something like the Intel NUC. My wife is very accommodating of having a PC in the living room after seeing what sagetv could do (before we started renting an HD DVR.) Now we use the PC to throw movies up, and honestly - with the right setup, it is very quiet.
An Intel NUC will be quiet - and if you're good, you can hide it so it's out of sight, out of mind.
What lengths are you running on USB/HDMI that you're getting tearing on the cabling in and of itself? That might just be a factor of the quality of the cables; I've run 35 foot cables without any issue - but these aren't bargain cables; they're around 70-100$ a piece for a work project (network operations center).