So I have a cheap PC coming to me over the next few days. I already have a satellite card for it and the plan is to hook it up to the TV in the kitchen. It's mostly going to be used for recording, and maybe sending the satellite picture to my PC. So far I've been planning on cheaping out on the OS and go with Mythbuntu. Am I missing out on functionality though? Like I said the main use will be recording satellite tv, probably playing music and internet radio, and I figure it will be handy being able to check things in the kitchen, from e-mails to recipes. And especially when information needs to be seen by a few people in the house, as in we can load up a website and all sit around the kitchen table looking at it. The only other use I can see for it is loading up emulators and playing simple games. I decided against a discrete graphics card because the video decoding should easily be handled by the on board graphics, and I don't imagine actually sitting in the kitchen playing games when I have my own PC. I am hoping to have a dinner party next week, so the idea of sitting around playing old video games sounds fun. I have a wireless dongle for XBox 360 controllers, I'm just wondering about what type of games I could get going on this (presuming the AMD A6 (FM2) processor and onboard graphics can handle it.) Also, any other functionality you can think of.
I'd skip Mythbuntu. I've installed Myth a few times to play around with and it's pretty dismal. Oh, I'm sure there are people out there who have absolutely deadly Myth setups, but I never found the effort/reward ratio particularly good. If I were you I'd consider either Windows Media Center (which is pretty slick, in my experience) or a combination of TV Headend and either Plex or XBMC.
