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At the ICS West security conference last year, there were dozens of vendors showing Linux based DVR security systems. Some were even just their capture card and an IDE dongle containing the entire Linux OS and their DVR application. Just put it in a system with an existing HD on the secondary IDE bus and you'll soon be running a Linux based DVR. Most were advertising "embedded OS" and higher reliability than PC( Windows ) based DVRs.

I had put together a list a couple of years ago and will post them here. you'll be better served by also google'ing for yourself and filtering out the Virus prone models.

http://www.spysource.net/digitalvideorecorders.htm
http://www.cctvsentry.com/Sentry_leseries_dvrs.htm #pricing
http://www.linuxmedialabs.com/
http://www.ituner.com/spectra.htm
http://www.sonerik.com/linux.asp
http://www.provideo.com.tw/DVR800.htm
http://www.at-fairfax.com/DVR/Info/Sentinel4.htm
http://www.avdeals.com/csispecosecure/digitalsecur ity.htm
http://www.tech-island.com.tw/ep1.htm

ICS West is April 5-7th so I'd be putting in a request for a trip to Las Vegas if I were you. ;-)

LoB

.. its all here ...

I have an older 400mhz Dell notebook. I am currently using a CF to IDE adapter in it.

http://store.ituner.com/ituner/emstcfl.html

It works great, i am using a 256 meg sandisk compact flash card and feather linux.

http://featherlinux.berlios.de/

Overall the performance is not too bad. Battery life is MUCH better without the hard drive. Write speed is not too great, but since I usually ssh into my server and leech from there, i dont need to worry about that much... :)

one of these or one of these

one of these or one of these

It's actually not very hard or expensive (I guess that's relative) to build a relatively quiet P4 or Athlon based system. Heatsink manufacturers are getting quite good at building thin-fin copper/aluminum heatsinks with big slow fans on them {1 2 3}. Or even without any fan at all.

VIA now offers an EPIA board that takes a P4 or Celeron (only up to 533MHz frontside bus though). At $185 (mobo only), it's a lot pricier than their C3 based solutions (which are IIRC $100-150 with proc included), but throw a P4 2.6GHz in there and you won't be "just a little short of processor horsepower" for anything. ;)

I've been trying to minimize my power usage for some time and have measured several different systems using a watts up meter. (Unfortunately filtered through my memory)

• Sony Vaio Picturebook C1VN ~12 watts
• Desktop without monitor using fanless VIA C3 ~25 watts
• DWI 7550 SBC w/ standard HD ~15 watts

I think the newer eden boards are a little bit better than the C3 in a ordinary mother board.

I think my G4 powerbook averages about ~15 watts as well. (Charging is closer to 30 watts.)

The important note is that the laptops include the LCD monitor whereas I was running the desktops headless.

Also to cut down on energy lossage with either the small desktop or the laptop try to get a DC to DC power supply. From what I've read an inverter will sap another 10 watts.

I have a Mini-ITX system (1ghz VIA C3), and it works like a charm for my homebrew tivo. Even with a dvd drive and 3.5" hd, it draws less than 50 watts, lower than many laptop PSUs are rated. If you really want to minimize power consumption, consider a low end (500mhz) VIA mobo/cpu combination with a compact flash boot disk and a laptop cd drive. iTuner sells CF to IDE card, and Case Outlet sells beautiful Mini-ITX form factor cases.

The Case is a mini itx case with a fan blow hole drilled and a low profile (probably U1) heatsink for the chip.

A motherboard that supports P4s in the mini-itx form can be found here, however I don't know any resellers... google it.

The rest is just laptop parts, but I really don't trust a 55W powersuply on a P4 so you might want to replace it with one here. My guess is that it will end up being $600-700 in parts so think about $1000 retail.

Looks like the Mini-Box online store is down even before the Slashdot Effect hits.