[OSX-Users] Hacking an AppleTV to make a good HTPC

[Sina Samangooei]

So, I've been toying with the idea of building a nice HTPC recently  
which can:

- Decode h264, mpeg, music, dvd playback etc.
- ... at 720p
- ... quietly
- handle some couch web browsing
- turned on over night for perfectly legitimate file downloading

First thoughts were a mac mini. Yes fine, pricey but it works as an  
upper limit of £500 for this task at least ;-)

Building it from scratch is another option. The Zotac mini-itx board  
with nvidia's ION chipset, which can apparently handle all of the  
above with no fans at all: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=53#ION-ITX-C

The problem is that after you've got the case, the optical drive, the  
80Gb laptop hard disk and 512Mb memory you've basically built a £300 - 
 > £350 PC. Add bigger external drives and a DVP solution and the  
price quickly escalates

Still a little pricey, so I've looking at the hacked apple TV path. It  
would seem there is a big community of people adding browsers, torrent  
clients as well as getting them working with external hard disks,  
optical drives as well as DVPs like eyeTV. All in all this would cost  
more in the range of £250.

So the price is right, also its a shiny shiny mac. But is it actually  
any good? Does playback stutter? It seems like a fairly underpowered  
machine, but is it enough? Has anyone done anything like this with  
good results?

Cheers
- Sina