[mythtv-users] commercially-produced mythboxes -- an idea

[Chris Petersen]

> A decent HD box is pricey, but not that pricey.  However, typically
> if you do it cheap you will see:

Yes, unfortunately, my company can't do it "cheap" -- no special sales, 
no rebates on parts, and since we really only deal with enterprise-grade 
stuff like RAM, that tends to cost more than people expect.  Plus, you'd 
be surprised at how easy it is to get parts below wholesale cost from 
places like newegg (due to some nifty tricks in volume purchasing), 
which we wouldn't be able to pull off unless machines were selling like 
crazy (which I don't expect them to).

We'd also run into supply issues if we started trying to push older 
hardware like my beloved asus pundit.  I need to talk with people at 
work to figure out what's going on with cpu's -- all I know is that 
intel is going to be killing off the socket 478 stuff, which leads me to 
believe that AMD will be doing the same with their equivalent line of 
athlons.  Which means no old/cheap processors.

This is all turning into something a lot more complex than I originally 
intended.  Things have been a bit hectic at work lately, so I'm going to 
put things on hold for awhile until I can sit down with someone who 
understands the supply chain and future availability of things like 
cpu's (I'm just the coder, not a sales guy).

Then there's the whole broadcast flag issue with the hdtv stuff.  I 
don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen to the linux hdtv 
market come June.

Your off-list email from earlier today has given me a lot to think about 
for the market segment, too, as well as about knopmyth (which I 
admitedly don't know much about).

Like you said, optimally, there should be an offering of different 
servers..   sd, sd+hd, hd, and frontend-only.  Not necessarily different 
machines (although it'd be sweet to be able to offer a $300-ish diskless 
  frontend-only box), since most of that can be handled through 
configuration options, but a lot of options to consider.

-Chris