[mythtv-users] Creating a Server for the Living Room

[Mark Limburg]

Howdy,

I'm after some advice on which hardware to use for my LRS (Lounge Room 
Server).  Rather than having two seperate systems (a home server/gateway 
and a MythTV box), I've decided to merge them into one machine.

Basically, the system's core functions will be:

  * SAMBA for Workstation Shares/Authorisation
  * MythTV with digital tv card
  * HTTP/SOCKS Proxy for DSL
  * IMAP/Apache/PHP/MySQL
  * MP3 Library (and play streaming music from DSL link)

So far, I'm looking at 2x200G SATA drives (with RAID-0 perhaps), would 
prefer an AMD 2700XP (or some such), 512-1024M of memory, and a DVD 
player (I've already got a DVD+/-RW in another machine).

So far, I'm thinking of sitting this in an Antec Overture case .. pic 
here ... http://www.antec-inc.com/images/400/Overture.jpg

This case dos get hot though, so I'm thinking of adding a pretty addon 
with a front fan (http://www.eyo.com.au/details_R-ALD-V02.html) which 
should look nice.

I guess my question comes down to .. what hardware best fits my needs? 
Which sound cards out there are *VERY* linux friendly and support Dolby 
5.1 sound?  Which motherboards just work out of the box?  I'm going to 
use a digital tv card, so which addition tv-out card works best?  NVidia 
perhaps?

I'm sure there are many of us who would love a single central uber-PC ..

M