hey.

id like to put together a computer to go in my lounge that can play video files to the tv from the network.
Im looking around the web for ideas on how to do this but it occured to me other people have prolly done this before and might like to give recommendations learned.
im pretty poor and wanna do it on the cheap so im pretty interested in what the slowest a computer can be to give decent performance. im planning on using linux (obviously), MPlayer and a vnc server (so i dont have to have a mouse or keyboard floating around) but i havent decided on which distro yet. any ideas???

hardware: can anybody recommend and video cards with tv out that would be cheap and nice enough? amounts of RAM, CPU, etc?

have fun.
Ben.

As much as you can afford, though I appreciate that isn't a helpful comment, it's a fair one.

Video decoding does take a reasonable CPU hit. As a general guide, you could take a look at the mini-itx specifications, those machines tend to be used as video players in peoples livings rooms because they look nice. You could put one together though you certainly would be playing for looks and size

As a vague guide (though don't quote me on this), I'd say something of around 600 Mhz with 256 RAM should play fairly well. As for TV out, I believe (and again don't quote me) the ATI 7500s offered excellant TV out options at a time when nvidia had only just worked out what TV out was. Those cards can be picked up pretty cheap.

As for distro...well I'd always suggest slackware, but almost any would do, there are some distros geared towards media playing, I can't name any off hand but google will help. But as I've said, what I've recommended shouldn't be taken as gospel, other forum members will have other suggestions,

Good luck!

Steve