I found an interesting machine the other day at http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5551137361.html. I was considering buying one of those machines, a usb IR receiver/remote, and using it as a frontend in my living room, with my backend server in my room.

Has anyone used one of these? By the specs, I'm not sure if it would be fast enough to run MythTV and stream video from my other computer.

specs:
# 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor
# 256 MB of DDR RAM
# 512 MB of NAND flash
# 40 GB hard drive
# Dual 100 Mbps Ethernet
# SXGA graphics controller, resolution to 1920 x 1440
# 2 USB 2.0 high speed ports
# Audio in/out interfaces
# RS-232 serial port
# Single 5V power supply
# Dimensions -- 4.7 x 4.6 x 1.6 inches (120 x 116 x 40 mm)

Until I see it in action, I'm sceptical of the Geode's horsepower.

It looks promising but you'll need something to convert the video output if you're not using d-sub on your tv. It would probably be ok for SD but not HD. I used to use a Celeron 600 for SD streaming and it as about the same speed and power as that unit.

I worked with some of the Geode processors, and they're a lot
slower than an equivalent Pentium or AMD K5. The instruction
set is somewhere between a 486 and a Pentium. A Geode at
500MHz is probably comparable to a Pentium I or AMD K5 at
250-300MHz. I wouldn't be surprised if it has problems playing
back standard def MPEG files unless there's some sort of HW
accelleration. Most of the Geode application examples I saw
promoted by National were for set-top boxes that had A/V
chipsets with MPEG decoding accelleration in HW.

_________________
Grant

Wow, thanks for all the info. The cheapness was the most appealing thing to me. Just put debian on my mac mini, maybe that will do the trick.