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There's a ton of cards for $20-40 as noted by others in this thread, and there's an even cheaper option.

Get a VGA (male) to DVI (female) adapter for $3ish.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16814999901

Moral of the story: don't look for parts at big box stores. You're paying 400% or more the suggested retail on any video card you look at.

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Rangesearch.asp? SubCategory=48&CNP_DisplayType=2&GASearch=3

Just check what bus and the number of DVI ports you need, and sort it by ascending price.

...to first actually check out what stores have to offer before asking? Sigh...

A simple search on newegg should get you exactly what you want:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=2010380048+1069109630&Subcategory=48

Or try froogle:

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=dvi+video+card &btnG=Search+Froogle&lnk=pruser&price1=20&price2=4 0&btnP=Go

As for a recommended card, I wouldn't know. :)

1. Go to www.newegg.com
2. Click on Video Cards
3. Click on Advanced Search
4. Set DVI to "1"
5. Click.
6. ???
7. Profit!

You can get a PCI-Express card for under $50 - an Nvidia 6200 at newegg

I have a 7300 for just over $50 and I'm quite happy with it.

Newegg.

If you going to build a mini system, Gigabyte has a nice AMD AM2 microATX motherboard that can support a maximum of 16GB DDR2 memory. I'm thinking about getting the ATX version for my next upgrade.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16835118215

... but MS took that option away from me as well...

Whatever. You can still get XP from retailers, you know.

Newegg.

If you don't want to pay for it, I'm sure you can get it from a friend, an enemy, or some warez site for free, too.

Newegg to the rescue: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16878190063

Also, my local Walmart has the Wii Play/Remote combo as well, but it is cheaper at newegg.com

The only way to get XP is to go with a used, refurbished, or off lease machine, or like another person said, go to the business machine section.

I got a variety of them for my house, some look like regular light bulbs, for those lamps that have shades that require them.
I am putting some CFL's in the refrigerator, replacing the 40 watt bulbs there.
I found that the refrigerator had three 40 watt bulbs in the refrigerator section, and two in the freezer. Replaced with 9 watt CFL's, and they seem fine. No, they are not the same color, but I will get used to them.
If I want to, when the electric bill comes in, I can go outside in the daylight and read it. I like to imagine that it will be cheaper.
Now, If I can replace all these CRT monitors with LCD ones. I really want one of those new 19 inch monitors like this one. I find it strange that they light those monitors with florescent bulbs, apparently because LED's are too expensive. Sony makes one laptop computer that uses LED's to light the LCD display, here is some background on the technology.
One thing to remember about replacing regular light bulbs with CFL's:
Don't wait. The savings start when you replace an incandescent bulb with a CFL. For those of you that require high light levels, they make some that run at 23 watts, a couple of those in a double ceiling fixture does very well.
First thing in the morning, you'll wish they were not so bright.

I flat out don't believe you. What couldn't they find in Vista? What's so drastically different from XP? Did they fail to notice the handy (new) search bar? Do they not know how to make shortcuts?

There's always going to be a bit of a learning curve with any new product that is different even in the slightest of ways. Complaining about how it's different is asinine to me...if they just wanted XP because that's what they were used to, then why were they shopping for new computers? Sounds like you weren't much of a help at all.

And as for this nonsense about Vista being a memory hog and performance drain...that is demonstrably false. I have a 3 year old Dell that I've just upgraded with Vista, and if anything, Vista is snappier.

You are right about one thing, though; XP is next to impossible to find:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?j=1&id=cat 16104&type=category
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/5385 14/ref=br_bx_c_2_1/103-9340057-3065405
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/search-ng.gsp?searc h_constraint=3944&search_query=windows+xp&Continue .x=22&Continue.y=7
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/howtobuy/d efault.mspx
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA =0&type=&Description=xp&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all

I'm sick of seeing these chips at outrageous prices.

I'm sick of seeing these chips at outrageous prices.

Prices too high, sizes too small:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820163159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820220156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=20 03240522+1309421175&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=522

4GB flash for $40-$60, sd for $45, so $10-$15 per GB, right now. 1 GB cost $60 about 18 months ago(they are less than $15 now); extrapolate linearly, thats 64GB for cheap($60!) in 6 years, and 128+ in 8 years. That doesn't account for a slight depression in prices as the size of the chips used goes up.

I'd pay $100 extra for a laptop with a 32GB flash drive to go with the giant hard disk, just to save power. That's fairly likely in less than 4 years.

Prices too high, sizes too small:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820163159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820220156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=20 03240522+1309421175&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=522

4GB flash for $40-$60, sd for $45, so $10-$15 per GB, right now. 1 GB cost $60 about 18 months ago(they are less than $15 now); extrapolate linearly, thats 64GB for cheap($60!) in 6 years, and 128+ in 8 years. That doesn't account for a slight depression in prices as the size of the chips used goes up.

I'd pay $100 extra for a laptop with a 32GB flash drive to go with the giant hard disk, just to save power. That's fairly likely in less than 4 years.

Prices too high, sizes too small:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820163159
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820220156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=20 03240522+1309421175&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=522

4GB flash for $40-$60, sd for $45, so $10-$15 per GB, right now. 1 GB cost $60 about 18 months ago(they are less than $15 now); extrapolate linearly, thats 64GB for cheap($60!) in 6 years, and 128+ in 8 years. That doesn't account for a slight depression in prices as the size of the chips used goes up.

I'd pay $100 extra for a laptop with a 32GB flash drive to go with the giant hard disk, just to save power. That's fairly likely in less than 4 years.

Are you retarded? They use the exact same CPUs/chipsets/RAM/video cards, everything that matters is the same.

Firewire? Who cares about firewire? Almost anything that has a firewire version also has a USB version, but I'll tell you what, if you must have firewire here you go: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16815150501 Firewire 800 for $28 for your PC.

"displays"? What display are you referring to that can't be used on a PC? Do you think you can't hook a cinema display up to a PC, because think again.

These days the differences between the hardware is almost nothing, don't kid yourself. What your paying for security and usability, which is nothing to sneeze at.

"What could you possibly run in a virtual OS X that you couldn't run on berekley unix or Windows?" - final cut pro comes to mind. Moreover who cares why you want to run it, maybe you just want to check out OS X, you might as well say why does OS X exist since you could do most things in Windows or unix/linux.

Jesus, you're still using the Linksys? While I still love my WRT54G v2, the GL is a total rip-off.

The Buffalo WHR-54-GS is the same hardware in a different case. For $30 less than the Linksys. I've bought three of them for DD-WRT flashing for myself and others.

Linksys lost my business when they decided the GL needed a price hike.

Although I use Linux, and OS X, I am not a fan of the Airport Extreme. It has a somewhat limited ability in its configurations. I like the Dial-up feature it has that is not common amoung wifi routers for those without broadband. Although it is not my 1st choice of router.

I personally use a Linksys WRT54GL flashed with DD-WRT. They are a complete solution for work environments, and good for home as well. I can get them for $65 a pop, and resell them for $100, and not charge installation. Since they run Linux, you can do almost anything with it. DD-WRT gives it the same, or similar abilities of a $600 router. You can have a hardware VPN solution in the unit as well. The WRT54GL has 16mb ram, and 4mb flash, along with a 200mhz broadcom processor. Its a nice little box. It is a complete solution in most of the networking jobs I do.

WRT54GL: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16833124190
DD-WRT: http://www.dd-wrt.com/

HD-DVD $399;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16882116085

BluRay $599;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=2000140489+1256422411&Subcategory=489&des cription=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

This will determine what wins. When at Walmart I can buy a HD-DVD player for $39 and a Bluray for $49, I will pick the HD-DVD to save $10. That's the market.

Add to the fact that I can watch adult entertainment on the HD-DVD and I'm even more less likely to purchase Bluray.

HD-DVD $399;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16882116085

BluRay $599;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Subm it=ENE&N=2000140489+1256422411&Subcategory=489&des cription=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

This will determine what wins. When at Walmart I can buy a HD-DVD player for $39 and a Bluray for $49, I will pick the HD-DVD to save $10. That's the market.

Add to the fact that I can watch adult entertainment on the HD-DVD and I'm even more less likely to purchase Bluray.

80 PLUS rocks. Why can't I do a search for 80 PLUS-certified power supplies on newegg.com? And for some PSUs they sell that are 80 PLUS, Newegg's product page doesn't even tell you.

For example, this Antec EA380 Newegg product page doesn't even mention 80 PLUS, but clicking through to the manufacturer's product page clearly shows the 80 PLUS logo.

C'mon newegg! Get with it!

I used Kill-a-Watt power tester, which can test for a number of things - I used raw amps.

I tested 4 machines with 5 power supplies in 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 drive configurations. I also took a reading of how much power the systems drew when I powered them on at 4 drives, which shows how efficient the power supplies become under serious load (it takes a good chunk of power to spin up 4 drives)

The machines were all tested with the same 1x1GB PC5300 RAM, and the same four Western Digital SATA drives. The Intel systems were LGA775 chips on an Asus, and the AMD's were AM2 - also using an Asus motherboard.

Here are the results (hosted by Voxel.net, so it should hold :) http://newyorkhatesyou.com/Power_Supplies.pdf

Power supplies tested: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817256001

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817371006

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817151022

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817234002

In a lot of cases the stock power supply uses almost twice as much power.

In Brooklyn I pay $.19c/kwh, so 1 amp of power can cost around $20 a month - ((volts * amps) / 1000 ) * time (in hours). This means pretty plainly, that the stock PSU here would cost me another $15 per month on my one desktop that I always have on.

Now if an office switches all of our workstations to one of the three 80% efficient power supplies, we stand to save a few hundred per month. Add to that the fact that these power supplies generally have more stable rails, and they should last longer - and its really a no brainer.

I used Kill-a-Watt power tester, which can test for a number of things - I used raw amps.

I tested 4 machines with 5 power supplies in 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 drive configurations. I also took a reading of how much power the systems drew when I powered them on at 4 drives, which shows how efficient the power supplies become under serious load (it takes a good chunk of power to spin up 4 drives)

The machines were all tested with the same 1x1GB PC5300 RAM, and the same four Western Digital SATA drives. The Intel systems were LGA775 chips on an Asus, and the AMD's were AM2 - also using an Asus motherboard.

Here are the results (hosted by Voxel.net, so it should hold :) http://newyorkhatesyou.com/Power_Supplies.pdf

Power supplies tested: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817256001

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817371006

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817151022

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817234002

In a lot of cases the stock power supply uses almost twice as much power.

In Brooklyn I pay $.19c/kwh, so 1 amp of power can cost around $20 a month - ((volts * amps) / 1000 ) * time (in hours). This means pretty plainly, that the stock PSU here would cost me another $15 per month on my one desktop that I always have on.

Now if an office switches all of our workstations to one of the three 80% efficient power supplies, we stand to save a few hundred per month. Add to that the fact that these power supplies generally have more stable rails, and they should last longer - and its really a no brainer.

I used Kill-a-Watt power tester, which can test for a number of things - I used raw amps.

I tested 4 machines with 5 power supplies in 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 drive configurations. I also took a reading of how much power the systems drew when I powered them on at 4 drives, which shows how efficient the power supplies become under serious load (it takes a good chunk of power to spin up 4 drives)

The machines were all tested with the same 1x1GB PC5300 RAM, and the same four Western Digital SATA drives. The Intel systems were LGA775 chips on an Asus, and the AMD's were AM2 - also using an Asus motherboard.

Here are the results (hosted by Voxel.net, so it should hold :) http://newyorkhatesyou.com/Power_Supplies.pdf

Power supplies tested: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817256001

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817371006

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817151022

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817234002

In a lot of cases the stock power supply uses almost twice as much power.

In Brooklyn I pay $.19c/kwh, so 1 amp of power can cost around $20 a month - ((volts * amps) / 1000 ) * time (in hours). This means pretty plainly, that the stock PSU here would cost me another $15 per month on my one desktop that I always have on.

Now if an office switches all of our workstations to one of the three 80% efficient power supplies, we stand to save a few hundred per month. Add to that the fact that these power supplies generally have more stable rails, and they should last longer - and its really a no brainer.

I used Kill-a-Watt power tester, which can test for a number of things - I used raw amps.

I tested 4 machines with 5 power supplies in 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 drive configurations. I also took a reading of how much power the systems drew when I powered them on at 4 drives, which shows how efficient the power supplies become under serious load (it takes a good chunk of power to spin up 4 drives)

The machines were all tested with the same 1x1GB PC5300 RAM, and the same four Western Digital SATA drives. The Intel systems were LGA775 chips on an Asus, and the AMD's were AM2 - also using an Asus motherboard.

Here are the results (hosted by Voxel.net, so it should hold :) http://newyorkhatesyou.com/Power_Supplies.pdf

Power supplies tested: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817256001

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817371006

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817151022

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82 E16817234002

In a lot of cases the stock power supply uses almost twice as much power.

In Brooklyn I pay $.19c/kwh, so 1 amp of power can cost around $20 a month - ((volts * amps) / 1000 ) * time (in hours). This means pretty plainly, that the stock PSU here would cost me another $15 per month on my one desktop that I always have on.

Now if an office switches all of our workstations to one of the three 80% efficient power supplies, we stand to save a few hundred per month. Add to that the fact that these power supplies generally have more stable rails, and they should last longer - and its really a no brainer.

I think the time is negligible unless you have either a damn fast computer or a very distant rental place.

But waiting for the transcode to take place is still fairly time-consuming - always longer than just driving down to the store and picking it up again.

For me, ripping is a matter of freeing enough hard drive space on my temp. drive, ripping the disc, transcoding the rip to something useful, waiting 2+ hours for the transcode to finish, freeing space on my media drive, copying resulting .avi file to said drive, deleting original vob files.

I think the time is negligible unless you have either a damn fast computer or a very distant rental place.

But waiting for the transcode to take place is still fairly time-consuming - always longer than just driving down to the store and picking it up again.

For me, ripping is a matter of freeing enough hard drive space on my temp. drive, ripping the disc, transcoding the rip to something useful, waiting 2+ hours for the transcode to finish, freeing space on my media drive, copying resulting .avi file to said drive, deleting original vob files.

I just looked into something like this for myself and found portableapps.com. You can load up your standard OSS on a USB stick and then use them on any windows computer. I went out and bought the fastest USB stick I could find and loaded a few of my favorites on there (Firefox, 7Zip, OpenOffice and a few others). It's been really helpful to have the software I want when I am in a variety of locked-down university computer labs and I can do things with this software that the other students around me can't like open some obscure types of compressed files, save documents as PDFs, and browse the internet ad-free. Highly recommended if you often use public computers or work on other peoples' machines.

Who pays $400 for it? You can get Vista Ultimate 32-Bit OEM from Newegg for $199 + $4.99 3-day shipping.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16832116213

Try this. Lite-on makes great drives and this DVD burner is only $28.99. You can save a whopping $5 if you don't need to burn.

For anything that could fit on a floppy disk, I'd just hand out a business card with a URL. 1.5MB is cake even on 56k.

Since I'm sure you've got some reason that giving out a physical disk is better, I'll go down that path as well:

Just sticking to Newegg, I was able to find this providing CD-Rs in slim jewel cases for 40 cents a piece, exactly the same price as your floppies but with nearly 500x the storage capacity. If I was buying them in larger quantities (such as for distribution) I know I could get an even better price.

Face it, the floppy disk is dead. It hasn't been useful for backup ever since hard drives broke a few hundred megs, CDs are a far better medium for commercial distribution, and the combination of e-mail and cheap flash drives has destroyed its usefulness for sharing files amongst friends/family.

They simply have no way of knowing.

That's always a problem with OEM OS loads.This Quick Reference Should clear up some issues for those who are not already aware.

I always figure in a new OEM copy whenever a board goes. You'll waste more time than is neccessary to try to save $139.00, but you saved a lot of money buying that replacement board from NewEgg. It sucks but other than sending it to (in this case EMachines) neither Microsoft -or- EMachines have no idea what happened to your hardware that your OEM OS is tied to.

I hate linking to an example at an online store, but here's one: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2b w/Upgrade Coupon for Vista - OEM [newegg.com]

I hate linking to stores too, but here's the Retail version from newegg. And if it turns out I can't get the upgrade, I'll be miffed :P I'll find out in a day or two if it's valid. Wish me luck ;)

So when that page says "Receive an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista when you buy a qualifying PC running Windows XP," they are actually referring to an OEM versions of Windows that was preinstalled by the system builder that built that "qualifying PC." They don't mention OEM versions of Windows because that page was meant for normal retail buyers, not system builders, and retail PCs have OEM versions of Windows preinstalled. They don't mention standalone retail boxed versions of Windows XP because they don't qualify (you're supposed to buy a "system").

My description is pretty confusing. A better description of OEM can be found from this Ars Techinca article: Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts

I hate linking to an example at an online store, but here's one: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2b w/Upgrade Coupon for Vista - OEM

I like Newegg, but that page for XP MCE OEM does not say anything about the difference between OEM versions and retail versions. It just has the letters 'OEM' tacked on to the name of the product.

So when that page says "Receive an Express Upgrade to Windows Vista when you buy a qualifying PC running Windows XP," they are actually referring to an OEM versions of Windows that was preinstalled by the system builder that built that "qualifying PC." They don't mention OEM versions of Windows because that page was meant for normal retail buyers, not system builders, and retail PCs have OEM versions of Windows preinstalled. They don't mention standalone retail boxed versions of Windows XP because they don't qualify (you're supposed to buy a "system").

My description is pretty confusing. A better description of OEM can be found from this Ars Techinca article: Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts

I hate linking to an example at an online store, but here's one: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2b w/Upgrade Coupon for Vista - OEM

I like Newegg, but that page for XP MCE OEM does not say anything about the difference between OEM versions and retail versions. It just has the letters 'OEM' tacked on to the name of the product.

Looks like you need to go shopping more often

I do. I also got a sound card that renders DTS 5.1 in realtime.

I SAID WHO WANTS TO FUCKIN TOUCH ME?!?

But, the price of Flash memory is dropping. Fast. Already you can get a 2 GB memory key for 19 bucks from NewEgg, which is just over the price of a DVD. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16820211226 By next year, you'll probably be able to get a 4 GB one for the same price, and 8 GB by the year after. At that point, you'll be able to fit a full DVD on a retail memory key for about the same price, and you know we pay more for those retail than the studios would pay for them bulk.

And while we're at it, why do so many mini ITX cabinets look like early '70's stereo equipment? Just give me a cheap box that's as blank as possible and mounts a CD drive horizontally. That means the case on;y has to be 6" wide, not 11".

I want a mini ITX computer, with as small a fan as possible to be a NAS. But the whole project is absurdly expensive compared to what it would cost for a big ugly mATX.

I think the narrowest you could realistically hope for that's relatively cheap is something like AOpen's S120 Mini-ITX case, which is 7.8" wide and accepts standard slim optical drives. When it becomes available, I still don't think it will be "cheap" compared to microATX solutions.

I think the smallest you can expect from a cheap microATX case is something like the In Win BT611T, which is 12.2" wide (with integrated PSU) and $45.

Going for what single product review will recommend is silly. I rather go for infomration on quality in many reviews, collect thoughts that are very similar, discard that are wildly different, to get understand what the product is *about*, in terms of use and see wether I like it or not. My preference is with manufacturers that don't boost specs, on monitors, like Samsung does:

http://www.samsung.com/ca/products/monitor/lcd_dig ital/ls19mewsfxaa.asp

vs:

http://www.hardware.info/en-US/productdb/bGNkbJiXm JLK/viewproduct/Samsung_SyncMaster_931BW/

But I go for hidden gems like:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16824116381

There's just too many product types out there to expect any site to track the feedback of, well, the entire market of stuff that's out there. For stuff I've looked for recently, garden equipment and robotic vacuums (ends up there's a bit more than just Roomba out there), I've found specialist forums and even commercial ads to be useful in tracking down details to search further on.

As far as generalist sites - I've found the eclectic community over at Slickdeals.net to be fairly useful in getting a quick grip on what to look for - but forum-goers there are intentionally against bad-mouthing products (thread-crapping), so you have to take a large variety of recommendations there with much due skepticism. Great place for leads though.

Then, of course, there's the Resellerratings-style sites. Once you've scoped product details, it's quite important to get feedback on who you're buying from. Again - due skepticism in all regards will help you in various ways, but large negatives or fake praise for rarely-rated stores can be an important part of an investigation for a large purchase.

If it's not a big purchase though, I'm usually comfortable just hitting Froogle, Amazon, or NewEgg and being done with it.

Ryan Fenton

Storage costs? $5.39 per movie at 19.6 GB/movie.

400 GB hard drive for $109.99. That's 3.6GB per dollar.

Being DRM free again? Priceless

I'm just waiting for the price to dip below $200, that's my limit on drives. And right now its 3 times that: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16827106037&ATT=27-106-037&CMP=OTC-Froogle

1: Yes, without a doubt. If you build it, they will come. ;-) There are already some PRO level component-in cards in the $1000 - $3000 price range (Blackmagic Decklink, Aja Xena LHe), but for the purposes of recording full-length HD content, they'd be prone to all the data rate problems already discussed here. To close the sale, the device would need *some* kind of simple data-dump interface that would work on an average PC with an average SATA drive. Since you seem to know low-level DMA programming, maybe the best strategy would be a self-contained recording device, where you just add your own HDD & go? Here's a player version of what I'm talking about: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16855182001. If something like that had a "record" button, I really think it would start a feeding frenzy, even at $2000-ish.

2: In today's market, I could see it being worth another ~$500 if you had a PCI and/or USB version of the device that did for HD component + analog audio input what a Hauppauge or ADS or Pinnacle device does for S-Video input. The price would have to fall eventually, of course, but I think $2,500 would be about right for the early-adopter market (i.e., before you could figure out how to get any economies of scale in the production process). For example, my Hauppauge PVR-150 will (a) tune my cable box via an IR blaster, (b) compress the captured S-Video stream to MPEG2, and (c) provide the muxed stream to a video input device channel that Windows recognizes. It's also compatible for use as a tuner card with Media Center, so some kind of drivers "know" that the IR-blaster & S-Video input "go together." If you are competent at writing Windows video capture source device drivers, then that might be the way to go (though I'd imagine that would add some serious levels of complexity.)

3: VideoHelp is one spot, yes; I'd also recommend checking out the HTPC area at AVS Forums: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f= 26/. If the word got out between those places and Doom9, maybe TheGreenButton.com and a few MythTv forums too, I think the sales momentum would take care of itself from there.

For starters, I'd say figure out if the boards you can program can indeed handle the input & scaling end of the deal. Then try finding out what it would take to get your board's output into MEncoder. On a Windows machine, I convert OTA HDTV streams from 1920*1080i MPEG-2 to 720*405 29.97fps MP4 w/AC3 audio (FFMPEG does the audio), and I can usually damn near run at realtime speeds (above 30fps) on an AMD 3800 X2. That's what makes me optimistic that a dedicated encoder based on MEncoder's code could do the job. Could one get 1080i/30 scaled to 720p/29.97 in hardware, perhaps using a GPU along with libavcodec's support for bicubic hardware scaling?

If you're really thinking about productizing this, I think the big decisions amount to deciding if your skill set is more suited to making a standalone device, or to going the extra mile to write device drivers for Linux and/or Windows. The icing on the latter option woudl be to add some sort of ability to bind to a tuner control / IR emitter, but that's probably not *strictly* necessary as it could be done with separate hardware & simpler, more platform specific software, I suppose.

I'm just a lowly C# programmer myself, but if there's anything I can do to help, or any alpha-testing I could do, please don't hesistate to hit me up.

Check out FIC's Neo1973 as an open alternative to iShackles. Coming to the US in February 2007! It runs the 99.99% open source Linux OpenMoko platform based on OpenEmbedded. A good hardware comparison between the iPhone and Neo1973 is linked here.

Following the mailing lists on the OpenMoko site, it looks like the Neo1973 is highly competitive with the iPhone. The Neo has a much better screen and a better processor. Plus it's completely open sourced except for a couple of device drivers (cellular and bluetooth?). You can write your own programs in whatever language and load them on your own phone yourself. Python, Ruby, Perl, C/C++, and so on. There's even a current effort to get J2ME working. And there will be a community site sponsored by FIC where people can share or sell applications and others can download them.

Personally, with nearly the same hardware abilities and the ability to write your own software, I see no reason to get a locked down iPhone. Sure, the iPhone comes with 4-8gb of space, that's the big difference in hardware, but it also costs $150-$250 more on top of a 2-year contract. So it seems that difference is a wash. (A 2gb microSD costs ~$60 USD from NewEgg.)

Say all you want about the software, if I'm going to carry around a something bigger than a Razr it better be a full blown computer. Not a crippleware 'phone.'

Aye, my MythTV backend with the disk dump has two 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives in a RAID 0 array. The frontend has three HDTV capture cards(two HD-5500 & one HD-3000). A Lowly 100mbps full-duplex network link between the two boxes.

I'm able to record three HD streams at once via nfs(nfs ver3, ver4 cause kernel panic under that load). Playback of one of the three streams while it is being recorded isn't do-able but recording two and watching an earlier(yet to be transcoded) one all at the same time works.

An hour of 1080i is a little shy of 8.5GB. The network link is the bottleneck in my setup, the disk array handles the task without a problem.