[mythtv-users] Best Motherboard for Front End HD Entertainment

[Tyler T]

It shouldn't be hard to find a mini-ITX motherboard onto which you can
install a fanless nVidia card which does the HDTV MPEG decoding (so
you don't need so much hot/noisy CPU horsepower on the motherboard).
There are lots of small and slim mini-ITX cases out there, some of
them are even fanless or you can undervolt the fans to quiet them
down. You can also run the frontend diskless via PXE + iSCSI / NFSRoot
to further reduce noise and heat.

This is assuming you have a remote backend with all the tuners and
storage, of course.

One company I would stay away from is VIA. I got bit by their
defective-by-design chipset with the as-yet-unfixed-after-three-years
DMA lockup bug so I'm a little bitter though.