On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 07:26:10AM -0700, Shawn Willden wrote: > I'm building a home theatre of sorts in my basement. I have a > semi-decent 5.1 audio system and I'm going to get a nice screen > (probably the Samsung 46" DLP -- still working on that decision) and I'd > like to hook a computer up to it to act as a video jukebox, to play any > of the several thousand Oggs in my music collection, to show pictures > from my database of digital images, etc. > > However, since this box needs to go into the home theatre environment, I > obviously need something that looks and sounds more like audio/video > equipment than a PC. So, I'm looking for suggestions. > > It doesn't actually have to look all that nice, as long as it can be > hidden away on a shelf behind a closed door. It does, however, have to > be fairly small, and run fairly cool. I didn't think about putting a > computer in when I had the shelving built, so it doesn't have a lot of > vertical room, and it also doesn't have a lot of air circulation, > particularly if the cabinet door is closed. > > However, I also don't think it necessarily has to be all that powerful. > It doesn't have to have much disk, since there's a 100-BaseT/Gig-E > socket wired back to my server. Enough processing power to transcode > effectively would be nice, but I could do that elsewhere, perhaps even > distributed across a few machines (there's an Athlon64 3400+ and a > couple of Athlon 1.4Ghz boxes around). > > It does need to have good audio out, so it can make use of the 5.1 sound > system, and a decent video card. Video outputs depend on the inputs the > TV has, I suppose. That Samsung I've been looking at has DVI inputs. > > Oh, and a low price would be nice, too. > > Would a Mac mini be a good choice? It's quiet, pretty, fairly cheap, > and should run Linux just fine. Or I guess MythTV has a Mac port. But > it doesn't look like the mini has much in the way of audio outputs :-( > > Suggestions?
Read the other million posts with this exact same topic in the mail archives? http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/ I use an xbox. If you don't care about HDTV you might consider that. It has a Toslink-style optical jack (or so I gather, I've never used it) that I assume would do 5.1. I use it to play back oggs, various video files including ripped DVD's, etc. Works well for me. If you want HDTV with DVI output and so one... you are going to have to start reading the archives, maybe anandtech.com, silentpcreview.com, maybe nvidia forums for driver issues, http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/mythhd.php, http://thegeorges.us/mythtv/, and so on. Aran
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