[mythtv-users] Help narrowing my options, please

[Dmitry Astapov]

Recently I came to conclustion that commercial off-the-shelf products could
not satisfy my multimedia-related needs. Being a big computer and Linux
fan, I decided to build myself a box that will run mplayer and output
picture to TV-out (sound familiar, eh? :)

I started googling and found out that there are many new wonderfull options
out there that I was not aware of - after all, I use notebook exclusively
for last three years and missed a lot what's happening in desktop world.

I decided that MythTV surely looks like the way to go - once again, I'm a
Linux fan and I dont mind running bleeding-edge CVS code of anything. What
scares me is a wide selection of possible hardware options.

Maybe kind folks on this mailing list will help me narrow my selections
based on my needs?

So, my needs are:
=================
First, my TV is (and will be) working in SECAM.

I'd like to play DVD/DivX off the removable media.

I'd like to play DivX from the local hard disk
 For that purpose, I'd like to be able to upload movies to local hard disk
 from my notebook -> I need Ethernet.

I want to be able to record TV shows. For that, I'd like to have ability to
capture rather big frames 720x576 (if I do not misspell the numbers), but
stereo audio capture is not required. I dont care wether encoding is
hardware or not as long as system is not overstrained with the encoding
process.

Oh, and I'd like to have an option to watch something else (even DVD/DivX)
while recording is in progress.

The whole thing should ne as noiseless as possible.

Size is not of a great concern, but the smaller the better.

What HW will be up to task?

So far, taking into account "small" and "noiseless", it seems to me that
something like VIA EPIA-M platform is a good choice. But then, google shows
that my mileage may vary, and from posts I found it is not clear what kind
of tasks could on-board vide perform. Is it able to playback DVD
with HW decoding? Be an Xv port for mplayer? Smething else?

Then, for TV-tuner card - should I go for something like WinTV 350 with HW
encoding or something bt878-based will do for CPU provided by EPIA-M10K?

Are there any other all-in-one mainboards that could be on par with VIA
size- and power consumption-wise?

I'll hold my horses here in order not to make this post overly long :)

-- 
Dmitry Astapov //ADEpt
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