Dave Sherman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> <snip>
> 
> One of my design goals is to NOT require a computer in every room, 
> except maybe a laptop to access the server and tell it where to send the 
> output. I'm not sure if we need to install separate sound and video 
> cards for each room, or what.
> 
> I've only just started doing some research on this, so I haven't really 
> RTFM yet. Just hoping to get a few pointers from those of you who have 
> done the same or similar.
> 
> -- 
> Dave Sherman
> MCSA, MCSE, CCNA
> Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.

I'm not sure how you could accomplish this without terminals for the 
TVs.  I'm slowly planing the same thing, but I plan on a pc on each TV 
monitor.  One of the genius points of MythTV is you can have your one 
central server, and a ton of frontends.

I've looked around a lot for cheap and small PCs that would work for a 
client, and I came up with this:

http://www.logisysus.com/
C-BOX 134 2" smallest slim PC, VIA 1GHZ/600MHZ fanless CPU
http://logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24_57&products_id=47

This unit is completely fanless and quiet, and just a little bigger than 
a standard CD-ROM.  It's also only about $370 for their base model.  I 
plan on loading gentoo and MythTV on these as clients.  I may even go 
for mounting the hard drive as read-only, and loading the root from an 
image to ram.

I'm not sure why you would chose not to put a PC in each room, but if 
it's for noise/power reasons, these are low noise and low power.  Plus 
all you need to run is a Cat5 cable.

Just some FYI.
Chris