[mythtv-users] Perfect, Small, Quiet, Cheap, HD Frontend??

[Craig Huff]

Had anyone suggested something from the Asus Pundit series?  I have a
P1-AH2 that works great.  I just had to go to the hardware store and
buy some stick-on rubber feet to stick on the side so I can open the
front door when I have it lying on its side on the cabinet shelf.
Yeah, the bright shiny metal now exposed on the side (that was
supposed to be the foot) looks kinda tacky, but if it *really* is an
issue, there's always flat black spray paint at the hardware store
;-).

My biggest complaint is the firewire port is on the front-side.  You
*could* always put a firewire card in one of the two PCI slots.

Oh, and I couldn't get the on-board sound to behave with FC6 or CentOS
5.1, so I used one of the two PCI slots for a Turtle Beach sound card
which works great.  Good thing I'm using it for a front-end only and
don't currently need a backside firewire port!

Only having two PCI slots would be very limiting in a backend, but
then why would you use an ultra-compact unit for a backend?

Another alternative is the Antec Fusion case, which is a fair bit
bigger and could even be used as a backend, but with only four disk
bays (counting at least one that should be a DVD drive), it would be
limited to using humongous drives to achieve any significant recording
storage capacity.  I plan to use mine as a frontend-only system in a
location that isn't so critical space-wise.

I'll stick with an old standard AT-size motherboard based tower case
system with lots of cooling fan mounting points, drive bays, and PCI
slots to serve as the master backend.  Yeah, it may sound like it
could fly if it had wings and wheels, but that's what closets and
basements are for ;-).

Craig.