Must be. You're skipping over the "unpriced" items though... Every little thing adds up.

The prices quoted add up to nearly $200 on their own. But then there are the prices for the rest of the kit. Figure another $90+ for a case, IR receiver and PSU. Plus there's still the question of audio - do the $100 mini-ITX boards have spdif?



The Sigmatel boxes only cost between $150 and $230 complete. The server costs are exactly the same for SageTV as they are for Myth and both are highly configurable. About the only thing you can't do with SageTV is compile it yourself. It's also available for Linux with likely the exact same hardware support as Myth.

The primary reason I suggest it "right now" is because of the Extenders and low total cost of setup/ownership. There's just simply no way you can build a mini system of any kind that will offer the capabilities of the Sigmatel SoC using off-the-shelf components for a price anywhere near what's out there right now from Sage and others. Maybe in a year's time, but not right now.



I generally just tell those people to lust after my modest setup and forget about a PVR of their own. Or get a TiVo.

Anyway, considering SageTV is the only solution out there today offering the same wide range of capture device support as Myth and with the added capability for a small, low-priced, silent and feature-rich extender, the Myth comparison for this type of complete client-server setup is moot.

It's quite easy to put together a complete HT setup including one extender for under $1000. Apart from some basic requirements, that cost will grow primarily with the choice of how much disk space to include/add.