A little while ago I purchased a second hand Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo EVi 2535 Home Theatre PC which ran Vista and now runs Windows 7. I recently upgraded it from the original 1.86GHz Core2Duo processor and 2GB of RAM to have now a Q6600 quad core 2.4GHz processor and 4GB of RAM (using a Zalman fan to keep it at a good temperature. I also supplemented the on-board Intel graphics with an nVidia GeForce 210 graphics card with 512MB of GDDR2 RAM (capable of also sharing 1.1GB of system RAM). Overall the only thing left to upgrade is the noisy DVD drive tobe a quiet BluRay.

I wondered if I could do better than Windows 7 and so I looked towards Linux. I installed Kubuntu 8.10 easily enough, but getting the nVidia drivers working was a pain, then when I installed LinuxMCE it took me hours to try and resolve the dependencies. After this it finally launched, but got stuck in a loop because it didn't install correctly and you can't un-install it.

I then re-installed 8.10, in order to use MythTV and updated the OS to 9.04 as it suggested. Then I also had to have the nVidia packages installed and that was grief because the wifi refused to authenticate for most of the time I had allocated. Then when I got the nVidia drivers installed it started freezing at random. So, I removed the hard disk and returned to Windows 7. Windows MCE isn't perfect and I like Linux as a server but overall I can't live with dependencies like that.

I will continue to look at Linux and welcome any suggestions but overall I can't spend days of my life just to get something not working.

Continued...

So, I actually went out and bought an Acer Revo 3610 with Atom 330 Ion graphics, 2GB of RAM and 250GB HDD. I immediately installed Ubuntu because the native Linpus Linux wasn't doing it for me and I am happier with Ubuntu.

I had a spare PCTV 74e DVB-T tuner and while this didn't have drivers when I started that didn't stop me preparing the machine. Thankfully Devin at KernelLabs was working on the drivers and they worked first time (well after I removed the firewire devices from the v4l compile!).

I have now been using MythTV for two weeks and I am not sure it is working for me, it has all the headline features but it is rough around the edges. Not homogeneous and I keep finding things that don't work quite right. I think the developments with the new Freeview HD products from my company are really going to fill the gap here and I will probably end up going back to an STB with a PC for everything else. Time will tell, the Humax Freeview HD recorder isn't ready yet!

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