The Mini-ITX Linux PVR Project

An anonymous reader writes "Home theater PCs have taken many shapes and forms, perhaps none more interesting than this Mini-ITX PVR. In part three of its Mini-ITX project, XYZ Computing has turned its Mini-ITX box into a Linux PVR, using Ubuntu and MythTV. This is a lot of computer in a very small package and designing it, putting it together, and then getting it to work was an interesting process. The article is a great guide for people who are interested in their own Mini-ITX Linux PVR, but also goes over the problems and pitfalls of a build like this."

Comments

One line summary

[fak3r]

It works, it's cool, just kind of a pain to build and more expensive than he wanted, but the DIY attraction and avoidance of fees make this an overall posititve experience for him. I'm still waiting for a distro that "just works" with a default PC you can buy, after throwing in a Haupage TV card. Plug in, boot from cdrom, try it out, like it, install it on HD...done. Is there such a thing yet, or should I wait for PVRuntu?

How loud is the dvd drive?

[EggyToast]

My girlfriend's got a mac mini that's utterly silent... until you put a CD or DVD in. Then the motors whir up and the laser jumps around and it's almost obnoxious! Since the article only talks about "quiet" in a general sense, it doesn't seem like he paid much attention to the use of disc media -- rather, he focused on HDD noise and fan noise. While important, I know plenty of people will use such a device to rip CDs to, watch DVDs on, and so on. Myself included.

Otherwise it's a pretty neat little thing, and seems to work well w/o much hassle. I'm still skeptical of those slimline DVD drives in media computers, though...

Re:Go LAN young man.

[chill]

Bingo. This is what I have set up in my house.

The cute little box that serves as my MythTV front-end is real quiet because there is no:
  a) Hard drive
  b) Fan
  c) Optical drive

It *does* have a GbE connection to a noisier box in a closet. This one has room for lots of large hard drives and a DVD-RW. The little box boots via PXE (only because I wanted the experience), but has a 1 Gb USB 2.0 thumb drive for "local" storage or caching, just in case.

The down side? The little box is almost useless without the network connection to the big box. This can be fixed by booting from the USB flash drive, if you want.

The up side? I have over 300 DVDs and 100 CDs all ripped to the big box. Movies, recorded TV and music is all available at any PC in the house. I have room for a couple hundred more movies and CDs before having to buy more hard drives. It is super-silent since there are no moving parts.

[Note to the MPAA/RIAA: I have the originals of ALL of those DVDs and CDs boxed away nicely, in storage, to avoid scratches and deterioration.]