Intel Atom + HD

Myxomatosis

I was thinking of getting one of these with 250GB HDD which would come to under 300 euro including delivery.

Slap in some DVB-T and DVB-S usb TV sticks (roughly 30euro each) and you'd have yourself the makings of a perfect little media center with digital terrestrial and satellite TV playback/recording.

There are 4 usb slots so you could use 2 DVB-T and 2 DVB-S sticks in for full PVR functionality if you wanted.

Sounds like a nice little solution to me, and relatively cheap too. Quiet and power efficient.

Only down side would be lack of processing power. I'm sure it would handle standard def H.264 perfectly well, but what about high definition? (BBC HD, ITV HD).

EDIT:
It comes with a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 which apparently supports hardware decoding of H.264

EDIT2:
Asus to the rescue Link
Wonder what kind of price that will be.

DemoniK

Myxomatosis wrote: »

I was thinking of getting one of these with 250GB HDD which would come to under 300 euro including delivery.

just bought the dual core mobo myself here http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=47#d945gclf2 for ~€70 and married it to a nice case http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=3#lc19
They also do some bundles quite cheap http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=44
Definitely need the Dual Core for HD.
With sterling relatively weak against euro - now's a good time

Slap in some DVB-T and DVB-S usb TV sticks (roughly 30euro each) and you'd have yourself the makings of a perfect little media center with digital terrestrial and satellite TV playback/recording.

There are 4 usb slots so you could use 2 DVB-T and 2 DVB-S sticks in for full PVR functionality if you wanted.

Sounds like a nice little solution to me, and relatively cheap too. Quiet and power efficient.

Only down side would be lack of processing power. I'm sure it would handle standard def H.264 perfectly well, but what about high definition? (BBC HD, ITV HD).

Ah here comes the rub- the 945 chipset on board doesn't do HDMI or DVI so will be hard to get decent HD output, and also there is no HDCP or decent HD video encoding/decding hardware. If you can hook up the VGA connector to your TV you stand some chance of displaying content - otherwise you're reduced to SVideo.

EDIT:
It comes with a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 which apparently supports hardware decoding of H.264

Nope - that's incorrect. see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_950
The GMA 950 supports hardware decoding of VC-1 and Mpeg2 - not Mpeg4.
It was the one thing that made me second guess buying it. But thought for €70 it was too hard to resist. Hopefully another manufacturer like Asus will marry the Atom with an X45 chipset for proper HD.

EDIT2:
Asus to the rescue Link
Wonder what kind of price that will be.

Shuttle are also doing soemthing similar here
Can't seem to find them anywhere to get a price though.

Myxomatosis

Think I'll go the AMD 780G route. I'd end up with a chubbier box but far more extendability and power. Can also use internal PCI DVB-T and S cards making things more tidy.

Aerocool "M40" schwarz, mATX
€44,68

Xilence Power 350w
€22,06

AMD Athlon64 X2 4450e
€45,58

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, AMD 780G
€68,50

2048MB DDR2 Aeneon PC6400
€15,85

Samsung SH-D163B SATA
€12,60

WD Caviar SE16 320GB
€38,24
Total €247,51

€30 delivery from Germany I think.