Update: Do to lack of support for DVI on my ATI video card, I have had to dump Ubuntu and go back to using the MacOS. This isn't something I am extremely happy about, but it works so I can't complain too loudly. I will have pictures and a write up of what I needed to make everything work soon.

So I like to have side projects to occupy my time with; usually these projects are required to have nothing to do with web programming, and if I can swing it, nothing to do with Computers in general.

I like to build stuff, so I usually try to have something cooking in that arena. My current building side project is to build an altar for our home. This is a long, involved process and as such it is very much on-going.

My current short term project was/is to build a digital media center, to replace my aging EyeHome. I have an aging G4 tower lying around the house so I thought I would see how far I could push the hardware. Surprisingly I can push it pretty far.

First, I downloaded and installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft (the final supported release of Ubuntu for PPC) and installed it. For the most part the installation was painless, it was the updates that killed me. I had to install Ubuntu four times before it "took"; two of those were of my own making and two were firmly in the Ubuntu camp. But I digress. Next up I installed MythTV, which was painless thanks to the most excellent Synaptic Package Manager.

I am much more comfortable with apt-get from the command line, but for some reason I could never get apt to respond the way I wanted. Moving to the GUI fixed that though, so I am not sure what is up there.

My system is pretty low class by todays standards, but I am extremely impressed with what I can get out of it:

1. The proc is I believe a 733 or 766 G4
2. It is running with 768 megs of RAM
3. And I have a 64 meg Radeon 9000

That is it really and surprisingly I am able to watch high quality AVI's, like those marked "High Res High Def" on bit-torrent, with no stutter or video degradation. All I have left to fix are the following problems:

1. The G4 has a headphone jack, but no line out for audio; Under MacOS X I could hook up a cable to that and feed it to my receiver, I can't seem to make that happen under Ubuntu, any help would be appreciated.
2. All the files I watch are 16:9, with no added bars. Under The Gnome Movie Player they fill up my 32 inch LCD as you would expect them to, but under Myth they are presented in widescreen + blackbars, and no matter what I do to the settings in Myth, I can't get rid of it. Again, any help would be appreciated.

I am toying with the idea of getting the EyeTV Hybrid from Elgato, and using my G5 iMac in my office to record OTA HD, mix it down to the quality AVI I want and then save it to the Ubuntu machine, any advice in this area (any experience with EyeTV Hybrid, or with encoding high quality DIVX AVI's) would be greatly appreciated.

I hope to have some example images of OTA HD and watching recorded content via the Ubuntu box soon, You won't believe how close they are.