Nemo's Universal Media Box

This is the ultimate goal of which NIPL, NUDI, CDIA and Genres on this wiki are merely a part of.

The aim is to have a settop box that acts as the following (at least)

It should also be in a cute/cool case.

A MS Xbox would be a nice form, if I wanted VCR-sized, non-rackmountable box. Also unlikely to support PVR capabilities given the hardware.
A modified Apple Colour Classic would be nice. But needs to be modded ALOT. (shoehorn a Cube and a flatscreen moniter inside - provides for some portability). Would he nescessary video input/output cards be possible however? Such a box might still be nice to setup though :)
An Apple Xserve would be very nice, for a rack-mount. CD drive would need changing to a DVD drive, as well as suitable graphics cards and soundcard. Would PCI and AGP slots be an issue? How about noise? Overall, this looks like an ultrasweet solution. See references at http://www.apple.com/xserve/specs.html
<Gaz> I found this in a Lindows.com semi-spam. Don't know how it stacks up against anything else you've got, but it's pre-built. MiniMediaBox

Other projects

Other projects with similar goals, in part or in whole:

http://graphics.cs.uni-sb.de/NMM/Status/MMBox/index.html - NMM
Davedina
- watching DVD, MPEG's, TV, ... on your TV screen
- record from TV, video, ..., both attended and unattended
- timeshift TV
- serve as an answering machine
- grab from CD or audio/in
- play CD's, MP3's, ogg's, ...
- answer the phone
- be remote-controlled, voice-controlled, web-controlled...
- integrate with home automation technology
- talk back to you
- have multiple personalities
RIMPS - web based (PHP) mp3/ogg server
Netjuke - web based (PHP) audio streaming jukebox
Boss Ogg - Boss Ogg is a client/server-based setup for playing ogg vorbis files. It's original (and main) intention is to be used in an entertainment center type environment.

You can get away from using FreeDB if your CDs support CD-Text.

NUMB is in accordance with NINS