Technology, video, phone & computer questions

[Autumnlicious]

Voltage may be iffy on the mobo -- check that. Simplest thing you can do is make sure the PSU provides enough watts.

Memory can be iffy as well -- I've encountered maddening crashes over the course of a year, which ended only when the memory was swapped out (Corsair 1GB DDR 1066 memory if I recall).

There is also the issue of EM noise (possibly from your power) that can destabilize a quasi-stable system.

I don't like XBMC -- I'm not certain of what infrastructure it uses to play media.

I am most familiar with the FFMPEG, Xine, VLC -based families of media players. Supporting exotic formats is... well let's not say it is a "solved" problem by any stretch. I'm still not sold on VLC's performance but time will tell.

I've developed and worked on custom systems that use ffmpeg/tvscan for recording/transcoding, mplayer for viewing, et al.

I'll tell you one quick thing about streaming -- don't. The best performing solution requires very specific codecs/formats to create pseudo-streaming, the "true" streaming solutions (RTSP, RTMP) are fucking chaotic as hell (wasted hours on this), and the maturity of the software is questionable and slow to grow.

The problem is best solved through:
1) minimization of parameters (choose what formats will be used, what user interface, etc)
2) understanding what will be a best combination for your hardware

XBMC might be a good user interface, but does it fit your intended use case? Are there plugins that would provide adequate functionality that a stock install wouldn't provide?

You might find a Pi can serve your needs adequately for playback. I am uncertain as to the recording capabilities (for DTV, etc).
REF: http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Raspberry_Pi...n_playback
REF: http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=PVR