I have found what I think is a good deal on ebay uk for a SN41G2 with something called Silent X.

This has an XP2500+, 512MB, 160GB, DVD+CDRW and TV out. Also dual monitor I think. It also uses the Nvidia chipset so should this work ok with mythtv.

What capture card would be a recommended addition to this or
there is a SK41G version that has a XP2400. Would this be better, it is cheaper?

Any suggestions or personal experiences of this type of machine would be welcome. I really do want to try an alternative to MS.

MY brother has an SN41G2 box with an XP3200 and a PVR-250, I think it made a quite reliable machine, pluged it in, installed and it worked. Personally with my mythbox its only an XP1800 And i have no performance problems.

I think any shuttle box with the Nvidia chipset works great with my from what I have seen so far.

Highly recommend not going with the SK41G because it has the VIA KM266 And from what I have read the VIA chipsets have been problematic. But then again my box has A via chipset and I got it to work with a little work. guess its a matter of how much time you wanna spend on it. SN41G2 = less work more money and the SK41G=less money more work. But you never know both could work just fine too, some thoughts to ponder.

Also look through the tier sections lots of people have used the shuttle boxes and post the success stories and failures there.

I bought a SN41G2B and put a PVR-350 in it and installed KnoppMyth R4V2 on it. After resolving some mistakes I made while installing KnoppMyth, it's worked absolutely perfectly. It's quiet and the black case will go nicely if/when I move it next to my audio equipment. I've stayed away from the 350's TV-out due to the reported flakiness so you could probably do just fine with a 250 in there instead.

If you'd bothered to search or check the tier 1 and tier 2 sections of the forum you would have found that the SN41G2 SFF box is very popular for this application and has a well supported chipset. Pay attention to the issues listed there and it should work fine. In the future, search first, ask questions later.

Silent X is the newer power supply from Shuttle which is supposed to be both quieter and more powerful (250W vs 200W). See Shuttle's website (under XPCs) for more details. BTW, Unless this is a used machine that someone has upgraded the PS on, it probably means that it's also a SN41G2 V2.

The downside of the SN41G2, or almost any other SFF box, is that limited expandability. Most SFF (and the SN41G2 in particular) only have 1 PCI slot, which means that all you have room for is one tuner/capture card. If you want to add a high end sound card, or a second tuner, or ... you can't. Also, most SFF boxes are only set up for 1 HD, and while adding a second one is possible (and I've done it), there are potential thermal issues to worry about.

Mordan, I have almost the exact system you describe, plus the PVR-250, with output via S-VIDEO to my TV. I installed KnoppMyth and, after resolving a few issues, it worked perfectly -- until something hosed the audio on my capture card. I don't think it had anything to do with the setup, though. I'm pretty sure it was a hardware failure.

So, yes, I like the Shuttle a lot because it's small and quiet and seems to run MythTV quite easily. Since I had so much hard drive space, I loaded up all my MP3s and served the other computers in my house via Samba. Pretty nifty.

Make sure you search these forums for advice using "SN41G2" as a search term. I also used Google to search for "SN41G2" and "MythTV" and got some good stuff that way. Installing the nVidia and ivtv drivers was not automatic or obvious. I'll try to post my installation notes sometime in the next week or so to help out others putting one of these systems together.