That isn’t to say I won’t have a geek indulgence session and go out and buy it all anyway, but I’ll let you know when that happens.

No opinion on Mythbuntu, but if it’s anything like the Ubuntu it’s based on, it should be pretty damn good.

I saw that knob, what the hell could it possibly do??

I want the micro but I’m not sure if i’ll be able to get the hardware I want into it, which blows since the bigger ones are ridiculously priced.

I thought there was going to be trouble with Blu-ray, I’ve got a separate player but it would have been nice just to have one box for media sources.

On the noise issue, I’m hoping that by having this system and the main storage separated, I can have it pretty quiet, the 15K disks I’m not sure how loud they will be but I have a couple in my main computer and I can’t hear them. Lounge room will be different obviously, will have to see. The less fans the better.

When are you planning on building yours? Any opinion on the Mythbuntu distro?

Nice setup, especially the disks! Unfortunately for me, in a townhouse, I really have no place to put a dedicated server where noise is not an issue. Whatever I build must be self-contained and quiet.

From anecdotal evidence only, I would judge that system more than capable of recording two channels and playback simultaneously.

Bluray … the bane of all *nix-based solutions. At present the only way to get Bluray playback is by dumping the entire disc to your drive and juggling with the content-protection keys which are periodically updated. In short: there is no way you can have a *nix-based HTPC playing back Bluray without hassle. You will require some technical knowledge (or a very well thought out script) to “automate” it.

And yes, the 350 Micro is probably what I’ll go with. It is the cheapest, but I can’t see what benefit the more expensive models provide to me – a control knob on the front? What is the point?

I read the doco on the flight back last night, for sure what you want to do the atom will give you plenty of grunt but you’ve already worked that out. Mine will be more of a central media hub where I’ll probably look at having a atom based front end for the bedroom and outdoors.

Based on the documentation I’ll probably have the following
Athlon X2 4550e
780G MB
4/8GB ram – Not sure if more ram will help
ATI 4350 GC – Has HDMI and 8CH LPCM passthru
I’ve got a couple of 146GB 15K SAS disks which i’ll use as the intermediate storage between that and the SAN.

I’m hoping that i’ll have enough go to record 2 channels and playback on multiple front-ends (Not that I have to, but why not)

I’m thinking of having a bluray burner for playback and copying to disk but I haven’t found much information on this yet.

As for the case will you be using the “micro” one? it looks pretty swell.

I think the dual-core N330 version of the ION platform should be enough for me – it’s “only” 1.6Ghz, but I have used these Atom systems before, and a standard single-core 1.6Ghz can play back 720p unaccelerated just fine. As for your question, if you read the very old doco on MythTV, they say that an 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 is “just enough” to record and play back HD content by its lonesome. It depends on your space requirements; with digital television you can dump the MPEG2 direct to disk without any transcoding on the fly. It’s pretty big, though with hard disk prices these days, who cares?

Aside from recording the odd show, mine will mainly be for watching television and media sourced from elsewhere.

With the cost of $385 for the ION mini-ITX board + $100 for 4Gb of RAM (its only $30 more for 4Gb than 2Gb, so why not?) plus the case, it works out cheaper than my previous Intel build, but not sure how it compares to your Athlon X2 system. Will investigate!

Are you planning on using Linux, or are you going to succumb to the corporates? :-P

For me I’m looking at having 3 tuners but I’ll probably have the storage mounted over iSCSI to my filer. Changed my mind on the Sempron – found a Athlon X2 4850e with a TDP of 45W bringing it to a similar league of the Sempron but far more powerful, I hope enough to record 2 programs at once. Any idea on that?

But I really like that case you picked out looks good, I might have to go with one of them. Where abouts did you source that?

Sorry for the long comment

eese

Unless you don’t care about wasting power :P

eese

although after reading your post i will be sure to check out mythbuntu