OK, I guess I think about this stuff too much but here's my thought and I'd like to see if it's do-able now or in the near future.

A SBE that is basically a network drive (see Linkstation, Kurobox, etc.) with a USB HD stick plug into it for capture.

The MBE would wake up the SBE to record and then do all the processing needed (comflag, transcode, etc). When done the network drive (SBE) basically goes to sleep until needed again.

Lather, rinse, repeat if you want to add another capture device. Your MBE could be an older laptop with 4-10G hd. (Of course FEs would need HD power, but that is beyond the scope here.)

I personally don't think this would be possible as with a SBE the machine needs to have some intelligence as to how to drive the USB HD stick. If the Linkstation/etc has been hacked and is running a version of Linux that is modifiable then you may be able to add that functionality.

The way possible I can see this working is having the network drive mounted on the MBE and have the USB HD stick connected to the MBE. The network drive has its own intelligence about going to sleep so it would act just like an internal HD.

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Girkers

The Linkstation and Kuro can/do run linux. And from what I understand, some folks have been able to use Mythtv in some form.

What about a lightweight KM 'port' for the "net-back-end" or maybe "slave-server"?