why do so many people want to use that crippled box for anything? I like to hack stuff and I want NO part of that. I would rather try to run debian on my toaster. I am not sure what one costs now a days but I think you can make a respectable MD for similar cost.
That's a fair question, DeadPenguin. I'll tell you why I'm interested. So you don't have to wonder, I didn't take offense at your reply.
I'm interested in it because of the low price. It's about $200 refurbished on EBay and about $220 refurbished from Apple. It has the HD monitor output built-in. It could be a decent, inexpensive front end to LinuxMCE.
Alternatively, AppleTV could be a standalone TV/movie box that uses the HDHomeRun tuner and elgato EyeTv. There's a $200 bundle. I'd have to be sure that the
instructions for running EyeTV on AppleTV at AwkwardTV turn out to be true. I could have a decent, inexpensive front end for LinuxMCE or maybe it would stand alone.
I'm also interested because it looks like it doesn't require a lot of hacking on my part. I'm not interested in building hobby systems any more. I'm interested in something that works now or nearly now.
AppleTV isn't ideal. It only does 720p, not the 1080i/p that I can receive OTA. But for just a couple hundred dollars, it might be good enough.
What I'm not sure of is how well AppleTV is or can be integrated into a LinuxMCE system. That's why I asked about adapting LinuxMCE for use with it instead of forcing LinuxMCI into it. So far, I don't see that LinuxMCE works in any way with AppleTV.
Having said all this, it might be that the $544
Fiire Station set top box cube with DVD drive is a better appliance. I know that it has 1080i output and is already supported by LinuxMCE. The extra $344 might be worth the hassle factor.
Dave