[mythtv-users] Alternative to Mac Mini?

[Matt Emmott]

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 5:44 AM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> On 27 July 2010 05:21, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Seriously, what, in a similar form-factor, besides the Dell Studio
>>> Hybrid and Dell Zino HD (neither of which has nvidia graphics)
>>> actually comes close to competing with the new mac mini? If ATI
>>> graphics didn't blow chunks, the Zino would be interesting, though I'm
>>> not sure an athlon neo is any better than an intel atom.
>>
>> I tried to look at a Dell Studio Hybrid, I couldn't find it
>> anywhere... All links are over a year old
>>
>> It seems to me that Dell discontinued it.
>
> D'oh, didn't know that. I had one, but sold it on the cheap to a buddy
> of mine to finance one of my ion purchases. :)
>
> It was a core 2 duo at 2.2GHz or so, took laptop so-dimms, laptop hard
> drive and dvd burner, internal mini pcie wifi and a second internal
> mini pcie slot for a "Broadcom BD Accelerator" (which was just a
> Broadcom Crystal HD w/firmware that enables BD support -- came bundled
> if you upgraded the dvd burner to a bd drive), intel x3100 integrated
> graphics (I can't recall if it had hdmi, but definitely dvi and
> optical audio), onboard firewire, external power brick, etc. However,
> it wasn't much cheaper (and was definitely larger and a bit louder)
> than a mac mini.
>
> --

I believe the Studio hybrids have 2 mini-PCIe slots onboard. One is
used by the wireless card but I think the other one is free. If
Broadcom CrystalHD support makes it into .24 then you can get full
1080p for another $50. Of course, once the CHD card gets Myth support
it pretty much changes everything, since with a PCIe adapter you can
drop it in any machine made in the last 3 years or so.