[clug] small form factor PC

[Paul Wayper]

rach4231 at myway.com wrote:
> Hi I'm thinking of building a miniform factor PC to use as a PVR.
>   
I'm blatantly biased, but I recommend MythTV.  Look at setting up a yum
cha box with TV cards to act as a back end and server, and stick it out
of the way where it won't be too noisy.  For the front end, a Mini-ITX
board from VIA is a good bet, but make sure you get one supported by the
Unichrome drivers and that has the correct TV composite and S-Video
out.  My brother bought a E-6000 fanless one of these recently and,
though the website advertised all the outputs, the board came with no TV
out in either form, and no headers to plug them into.

But you know what I'd like to see as a front end?  An Apple TV.

They have all the TV hardware for a great set-top box, and AFAIK it's
all either Intel or NVidia kit - i.e. there's already good support for
it in major distros.  It's a super-quiet box with built-in power supply,
storage, and network connections.  And for $450, it's cheaper than
trying to put together a comparable Mini-ITX box.  It doesn't have a DVD
player, but that's OK - either rip them into MythTV, use a separate
stand-alone DVD player, or buy a Mac Mini.

The only thing I don't know is how to install Linux on them - apart from
a few reports of people getting Gentoo on them soon after they came out,
I've heard nothing.  So it's not something that someone without $450 and
a fair bit of time and experience should really attempt...

HTH,

Paul