As one of those who has built a Linux HD-HTPC... (Score 1)

My problem wasn't so much getting the basic system to work, though getting the pcHDTV card working was a bit frustrating simply because a weak signal can cause the tv player software to crash...but getting seemingly simple stuff set up right has been a challenge. I have myth running under Debian on a 3Ghz P4 w a pcHDTV card. That part works fairly well, though I don't have many HD signals to choose from yet in my market. On the other hand... when I play a DVD with xine it uses my full 5.1 speaker setup and sounds great. When I play or rip DVDs through myth, it uses only the front channels. As often as not it will take play foreign language audio tracks no matter what I tell it to play. So now the simple job of ripping a DVD to the hard drive becomes trial and error and provides inferior results. I'm sure there is a simple fix for that, but I haven't found it.