Small Intel Atom box running Mythbuntu

[OwlHoot]

Anyone tried this, or looked into it? References and links welcome.

For example, what would be a good model of small form factor box, with shed loads of USB ports and a decent graphics card or ability to add an external graphics board?

Maybe it would be better to wait a month or two, because apparently Intel are about to announce a load of new Atom processors

[doodab]

You might do better to look at a Mini-ITX board and Core i whatever with integrated graphics. The Core i3 will happily handle HD. I along with many others have one running windows media centre. I did look at MythTV but I just couldn't be arsed with the required level of involvement as I needed to get it built and working in a day.

[xchaotic]

What do you need this for?
Even if this is for streaming media only, I wouldn't go lower than core i3 or even the 2nd gen core.
H67 is a great media centre chipset and maybe a low end core i5 is an overkill for that, but it's so power efficient that you won't even notice.
A real life example I had last week is my son was given Bob the Builder DVDs and immediately started scratching them.
The GPU encoder would have taken very little time, but it didn't want to split episodes automatically.
The CPU based Handbrake had taken in excess of an hour to reencode to iPad compatible x264 for each of the 3 DVD.
I imagine on an Atom it would have taken in excess of 3 days....
The GPU acceleration has gotten much better for playing back the movies, but everything else, including filesystem management, unrar, whatever, is very much CPU.
In idle the latest core is great, power and temp wise.
If you consider your daily rate, the time you spend on building this, you're best off having a PC that's silent, fast, cheap in that order.
I've spend a good deal of time researching this subject and finally have a quiet >3GHz PC suitable for media but also for gaming so I don't need another XBOX or PS3 just for that.
Running Windows 7 on that it means is also compatible with whatever odd software I can't run in a VM on my work laptop.

[OwlHoot]

I did look at MythTV but I just couldn't be arsed with the required level of involvement as I needed to get it built and working in a day.

I gather you're right about the high fiddle factor of MythTV per se; but apparently Mythbuntu is supposed to hide a lot of the gory details, in one OS and MythTV package.

Or that's the theory - I suppose it could end up being even harder to make any necessary adjustments, or upgrading the OS or MythTV independently if required (although the site says updates to both are done on the same cycle).

[OwlHoot]

I've spend a good deal of time researching this subject and finally have a quiet >3GHz PC suitable for media but also for gaming

Any chance of posting the salient items in your hardware/software spec?

Quietness is more important than people often realize - My Playstation 3 used to be almost silent, but has recently taken to whirring like a 747 taxiing on the runway.

[lilelvis2000]

Any chance of posting the salient items in your hardware/software spec?

Quietness is more important than people often realize - My Playstation 3 used to be almost silent, but has recently taken to whirring like a 747 taxiing on the runway.

Dunno anything about a playstation 3. but if you can open it and figure out the fans then take a look at http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/home and get them replaced.

[amcdonald]

Any chance of posting the salient items in your hardware/software spec?

Quietness is more important than people often realize - My Playstation 3 used to be almost silent, but has recently taken to whirring like a 747 taxiing on the runway.

My PC is like a quiet ish server, but has the nice side effect of cooling my room in the summer do the cold air the gigantic fan spews out

Quiet isn't everything, when you free air con thrown in

[PAH]

Quietness is more important than people often realize

Yep, if the media box is going to be near the TV then noise is very important.

The Intel ION and ION 2 based solutions offer dual core Atom with passive or minimal active cooling IIRC so worth checking out. The ION side of things also has onboard graphics capable of decoding HD video, blu-ray etc, so ideal for media centre uses.

e.g. Acer Revo available for under £200

[d000hg]

My PC is like a quiet ish server, but has the nice side effect of cooling my room in the summer do the cold air the gigantic fan spews out

Quiet isn't everything, when you free air con thrown in

Warm. The air's just moving so it feels cool.