media center hardware suggestions? (xbox?)

[David Fox]

On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Francisco Borges
<francisco.borges at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone has suggestions of (European) vendors of media center
> systems which are Ubuntu-compatible?
>
> Anyone with experience running a Ubuntu media center on a Xbox? Can I
> get a remote control to work with t?

Well, since you mention HDTV output, you'll probably be wanting to
play high-definition video content on the thing. And since you mention
xbox, I don't think you'll be very successful doing that. The video
bandwidth of HD is staggering :). One reason I went to my current
setup (amd64 dual core) was that my athlon 1000 was too slow to play
any HD without stuttering every few seconds - as if I were trying to
play a dirty dvd or something :(. And xboxes are even less CPU than
the athlon 1000 (aren't they 750 mhz p3s?)

You'll also want good cooling and probably a better (i.e. dedicated)
video card. On my current setup (amd 64, ECS m/b, with integrated
nvidia 6100 and the 173.09 nvidia driver binary) my system shuts down
some time after playing some mkv files I've gotten off the net - these
are generally 700+ pixel resolution in the vertical setting, 720p I
believe, not 1080p, which I guess is even more difficult to deal with
:). I almost always use mplayer (64 bit) with the videos, and
sometimes I still get a "Your computer is too SLOW to play this"
message, although It doesn't dramatically affect the video
"experience" - where the same "experience" would be an unwatchable
video were I still using the Athlon 1000. (Oh, and I had a dedicated
Nvidia card on that mb - an FX 5200).

Sometimes it can get through the whole video without reaching critical
temperature, other times it can't. Granted, your xbox will probably
not be running setiathome at the same time (but that is niced, and
doesn't affect temperature much), so cooling is an issue.

Having a small and discreet case may be the antithesis of good cooling, as well.