media center hardware suggestions? (xbox?)

[Francisco Borges]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Sandy Harris <sandyinchina at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Fox <dfox94085 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Have a look at Playstation 3. IBM/Toshiba/Sony jointly developed Cell
> processor, very interesting architecture. Includes a Blue-ray drive; if
> you need one of those, PS3 may  be cheapest way to get it.
>
> There's an Ubuntu for it http://psubuntu.com/ Last I heard, only 7.10,
> no 8.whatever yet. Yellow Dog also have a Linux for it, and I think
> NetBSD runs on it.

Hello Sandy,

Thanks for your answer (and also thanks to everyone else who also
answered my original email!)

In the few days since I posted this message, I discovered that indeed
the Xbox cannot play HD content, and that the PS3 can.

The biggest problem with the PS3 is that although I can easily install
Linux on it, most of the hardware capacity is still unavailable (when
running Linux). So I could use the PS3 as a HD capable DLNA
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance) client,
I would fail to play HD content from Linux.

I do agree though that (due to their sheer volume of sales) getting a
gaming console, is probably the best price-cost ratio that I can get.

I decided to buy a NAS for backup & media storage that can be used as
DLNA server and will search for a client to play the media afterwards.

Cheers,
-- 
Francisco