Summarising my thoughts so far... The Pundit-R looks good and has an optical SPDIF output, which is a bonus for me because my AV amp has a spare optical input. The downside is that it is on the front, and as well as not looking great, this may be an issue as I have a 28 month-old and a 4-month old to contend with.
The Silverstone LC02 with an EPIA10000 option looks good, but I'd need to add the remote. I guess I could re-use the remote from my VCR and then build an IR sensor from scratch. Having a diskless front end seems like a great idea, particularly as the front-end box is difficult to get on a UPS and power cuts are frequent here. It's probable I'll also install a front end for my wife's parents (who are about to move into an adjoining "annexe"), so the simplicity of a diskless client there looks good, too. Of course, if I want to build more than one, I need to find an alternative remote unit, but I'm guessing that shouldn't be too hard. The Silverstone LC11M has the remote and VFD, which could be a good toy to play with, but then I need to get all the additional components. I happen to have some memory and a 2.4GHz P4 hanging around, so it's tempting to get a motherboard/video card/sound card combination that does decent TV-out has an optical SPDIF connector. There don't seem to be that many uATX motherboards (particularly from manufacturers I'd trust) that support the older P4 processors though, nor motherboards/ soundcards with optical SPDIF. Many of the other cases just look too much like PCs until you get into paying stupid money. The Xbox does look ugly and is apparently a bit on the noisy side. On the plus side I'm told that the TV-out is very good, and they're cheap. I don't think I'd want one sitting in plain view next to my amp etc., but I'd be quite tempted to look at using one for the kids playroom. At the moment I can't decide between the LC02 and LC11M solutions, but if I can find a suitable remote and the necessary bits for the receiver I think I might lean towards the LC02. James
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