One thing I forgot to do in my last post, which was rather lengthy, was to quickly display a list of ingredients for my perfect multimedia setup, software, hardware or otherwise. Here's the component list I've always wanted ... what's really cool is the milestones I've reached along the way, making future progress possible. It's great stuff to see a dream come true after years of working at it. 
Milestones
- Remote control that doesn't suck. Streamzap USB remote.
- Nice backend to archive everything: dual-core amd64 box running Gentoo Linux, motherboard with six serial ATA connectors
- High quality TV tuners: Hauppauge PVR-500 (dual-tuner, MPEG2 hardware encoding).
- Chapter support, metadata storage: Matroska container format
- Playback chapter support: MPlayer
- Playback / resume position: MythTV for TV recordings, mplayer-resume for everything else
- Automated DVD ripping solution: mplayer, ogmtools, lsdvd, mkvtoolnix, bend
Most Wanted
- Video browser: MythTV + MythVideo works ... needs some tweaks, though.
- Quiet frontend(s): Mini-ITX with onboard DVI, audio, S/PDIF, USB, network
So, as you can see, I'm pretty close. My issues about MythVideo are minor, there's just three really small things I would change, I'll write about them later.
One thing I'd add to the "most wanted" list is a playback / resume option for playlists. For instance, if I'm watching a season series, I don't want to remember which episode I'm on ... I just want to resume watching the shows. Coming up with something shouldn't be too hard, I just haven't looked into it yet.
Good times.
I wish I could understand 1/100 of what you do, but I do know it's impressive.
When you finished building, please make a copy and send it to me. Thanks!
You got MythTV working? I hate that thing by now. The backend is yapping to me about database privileges etc and the frontend doesn't find the backend, even if it's started at boot :
Seems the bloq software doesn't handle the smaller than character well...
Still I'd really like to have what you describe too
.
By the way, check this out: http://www.bcmcom.com/bcm_product_mx965gme.htm. It has HDMI for 1080p!
Thanks for the post! I was looking for a remote like the Streamzap USB for quite a while. Will try it.
I can attest to what Steve is trying to do - and that it's possible.
I currently have mythTv set up in my basement home-theater with a projected image of 106", containing my collection of 120+ DVDs. It also has HD-TV capability (thanks, Steve), and holds all my music, digital camera pictures, movies, and TV shows. It also acts like my Tivo, thanks to zap2it (which expired like... a week ago.)... So, anyway...
To those doubters, I say, "Yes, it can be done, because I've been doing it for 2 years now". Keep at it.