I've got one showing up on the 30th according to fedex's site. I'm just going to use it as a nonvideo playing oribiter/md that will run a touchscreen access panel and do bluetooth detection near my door entry to my house. I'll put it through it's paces though and see what i can get the graphics to do and what kind of video it can handle. I've already know how to get unichrome graphics working so it shouldn't take me long once I have it in hand. For $60 it's about impossible to beat for a low power system.

I'm not happy with my pvr-500. I'd go with two pvr-150s instead. My reception is very poor on the 500 compared to the 150s and I have very good rf signals coming in that are in good power ranges. You may get better results but for me the 500 is only good for svideo capture of my cableboxes

that be-2400 chip will have problems with x264 and h264 encoded hd material. It should be able to handle 1080i and 720p material ok. If you plan on using XvMC I'd advise against it as it has never worked right for me since myth version .18. I went with a intel E2180 and overclocked it to 3.1 ghz easily without boosting cpu v-core (voltage)

for an idea of the hardware I'm using here you go: http://mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/User:Blackoper

I'm not sure about that Caviar disk array. I remember hearing their drives are crap. You may be better off buying two $200 western digital 1tb drives and either putting them in e-sata external cases or make your own array case on the cheap. You will probably be much better off and have better speeds and longer drive life.

You are paying way too much for your ram.  You should be looking for high performance ocz or crucial ram for $30 to 40 after rebates and a latency of 4. Check out deal sites like fatwallet.com or slickdeals.net and their hot deal forums to save some money on your parts.

I'm not planning on using it as a md for video. I already have two overpowered systems that can be converted to those duties (mythtv clients right now) and a massive main server. I'm really looking for some low power boards that can be used to run touchscreen interfaces around the house and do the bluetooth detection. Two or three of these may just fit the bill.

is there any kind of estimate on when support for a z-wave device that I can find in the wild is going to be added. A week, a month, etc. I'm jonesin to start setting a zwave implementation up and right now it's almost impossible to find a supported device that can interact with linuxmce/pluto

I'm going to buy one of these boards. Tough to beat the price
http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001

at the very least I can build an all-in-one touchscreen orbiter with it. 20 watt power usage max and 2 watt idle power is just spiffy