Via EPIA Media Box?

I'm considering building myself a Via EPIA-based media/NAS box in the new year, as a replacement for the LinkStation NAS I have upstairs (my latest Unison run took 24 hours due to the limited RAM) and the ThinkPad X22 I have under the hifi (as it only plays music, and doesn't do video).

I notice that all of the EPIAs have hardware MPEG acceleration, though I'm not sure what models have what features. I plan eventually on using the box to play DVDs and random MPEG streams from (say) BitTorrent, and play and record DVB-T streams. Can anyone say if the Via EPIA MII 6000 is capable of this, or should I go for something a little more powerful like the SP8000EG? The former has an "MPEG Accelerator" whereas the latter explictly states accelerated MPEG decoding and encoding. Please email me or leave comments, thanks!

17:00 Sunday, 03 Dec 2006 [#] [computers] (11 comments)