iMac 27" i7 - Want One, Help Me Figure Out How To Switch From A PC

[Fissure]

Haven't owned a Mac in many years. The last one I had, and not for very long, was one of those White iBook G3 Laptops. But I'm old school Mac. I have owned the Powerbook Duo 2300c and the Powerbook 5300c. I own a rather nice PC now but it's over 3 years old.

I want a iMac 27" i7, 8GB RAM, SSD+2GB HDD, Applecare

I've done a bit of research here to determine what I'll need to purchase in order to overcome some of the features my current PC has that I'd like to continue to use with the iMac. I'll be using Bootcamp to dual boot into Win7 so application compatibility is not such a big concern. Here's what I have so far. Please comment/link for proposed solutions.

Blu Ray Burner:
I could get a external Firewire 800 5.25" device bay (already own the actual internal drive) to use externally with my iMac. All I do with the drive is backups. I've searched a little and found some cheaper lookin stuff but does anyone know of one that is rock solid? Please advise. Also Firewire 800 would be the fastest way to go correct? I know USB 2.0 is not as fast and don't believe the iMac's have eSATA.

TV Tuner Card:
Can't really add one of these to the iMac so the only solution I've found is to use a Slingbox Pro-HD to sling video to the iMac over the network. Football season is upon us! Any other suggestions?

Trip-Monitors:
I have two 24" Dell monitors now. Add the iMac and that makes 3 monitors. I'd like to use ALL three. The only thing I could find are external box solutions along with adapters etc. Can anyone recommend a solid external solution that will it give me the same spanning options I could get through Win7 with trip monitors (scroll from center to right to right monitor, scroll from center to left onto left monitor, OSX/Win7 desktop in the middle on the iMac)

Thanks in advance for your advice.

 

[Vylen]

TV:
http://www.elgato.com/
Take your pick for features/price

3+ monitors:
http://displaylink.com/shop/index.php
Take your pick for the device you need and one that'll support the resolution you need. Pretty much any DisplayLink is "solid" - just try to stick with solutions from like Toshiba and HP for example since you'll probably get a better customer experience if anything goes wrong.

 

[Fissure]

TV:
http://www.elgato.com/
Take your pick for features/price

3+ monitors:
http://displaylink.com/shop/index.php
Take your pick for the device you need and one that'll support the resolution you need. Pretty much any DisplayLink is "solid" - just try to stick with solutions from like Toshiba and HP for example since you'll probably get a better customer experience if anything goes wrong.

The Displaylink is kinda confusing. Am I reading it right that I'll need a Displaylink Dock in order to hook up my 3rd Dell Monitor? It seems as though there are Displaylink certified monitors out there and then all you'd need is the Displaylink driver installed but I am pretty sure my 2 Dell monitors are not Displaylink certified.

 

[Vylen]

You'll need a dock/adapter.

DisplayLink certified monitors are ones that have USB as input.