MSI's Home Theatre PC Reviewed

VL writes "MSI, long time motherboard and video card manufacturer, has upped the ante somewhat with their MSI Entertainment and Gaming (MEGA 651) PC. Like other popular SFFs, the MEGA 651 is still "cube" in appearance, and offers support for fast CPUs and an AGP slot, but it has some unique ideas that target those specifically looking into building a Home Theater PC (HTPC). "

Comments

But does it run MythTV?

[laird]

This looks like pretty hardware (aside from the pathetic lack of TV in/out in a "home theater" PC) ... but the million dollar question is whether it will run MythTV (www.mythtv.org), the open source TiVo-like system? MythTV is a fantastic project, but it's pretty picky about the hardware it will run on.

I only made it two pages into the review before the site was slashdotted, so apologies if they documented the software later in the review...

Interesting but Disappointing

[truffle]

Like many geeks I'm interested in getting some kind of component PC to handle my audio and video. This product is interesting, but it doesn't quite provide what's needed (which doesn't detract from the product, just means it doesn't meet my needs).

I'm looking for a component PC that:
- runs linux (not some customized version, just regular debian)
- has audio and svideo in/out
- has cute little component system type nobs and a remote
- plays my mp3 collection and can be controlled by the remote
- plays my video collection and can be controlled by the remote
- can record video to the hard disk like a PVR or ideally a TiVo (ideally with an mpeg4 encoder built in)

I think we're close but I haven't seen something that quite does this. In particular I think the missing component is runs debian and integrates with remote. This may seem a bit weird but, besides all the audio and video stuff, I expect to do a lot more with my linux PC and I don't want to be stuck with non-debian linux.