If you are looking to offload MP4 decoding to the video card under VDPAU, I thought nVidia stated it would only support on 8600 and above.

Question #3 - Any opinions on USB remotes that have lirc scripts in R6 to use?

Pros: This board is the perfect HTPC. I play full 1080p video from this onto my 56" 1080p Plasma, and it looks wonderful, and never skips a beat. Mine: NC91-330LF, 60w PSU, 2GB DDR2 667Mhz ram, slimline SATA bluray drive, and a 250gb 2.5" SATA hard drive.

Cons: its tiny size can make it hard to find a case for, but when you find one, make sure it at least has a 60w PSU.

Other Thoughts: This packs some serious punch for the price. I only wish it had a HDMI or DVI out on it.

Pros: Idles at 34W with a PSU of unknown efficiency (but was the lowest of 4 different PSUs) without any drives connected. Runs great as a file server using a special build of FreeNAS. FreeNAS does not include the driver for the onboard NIC so that has to be added manually.. for now.

Cons: Idles at 34W. While 34W is low compared to normal PCs, when you consider the CPU itself has a TDP of just 8W, 34W is way too high. How inefficient can they get with the other parts of the board? The concept of a low-powered PC is good, and what the Atom can do with just 8W is amazing, but the use of the power-hungry 945 chipset (22.2W vs 8W TDP) from the P4 days in this first volley from Intel is astoundingly hypocritical to low-powered PCs. Hopefully the next generation will be better.

Other Thoughts: STOP calling the fan the CPU fan. It is the CHIPSET fan. Do whatever you need to do to verify that for yourself, and just STOP calling it the CPU fan.

The Atom 330 cannot handle live 1080p H264 decoding. Even with CoreAVC there is no way.

There is no SpeedStep, that only exists on the netbook versions. That doesn't really matter though, the CPU is hardly the power-hungry part of the board.

Pros: - has TV out*
- Boots Vista faster than cheap laptops.
- A prequel of i7 (Nahalem) technology with hyper-threading enabled multi-core processor. In this case dual core + Hyper-threading makes for 4 threads.

Cons: * TV out is ONLY a clone of the main monitor- dual head not supported. Only options are: Monitor/TV/Monitor+TV Clone
- Will not handle full screen 1080p without stuttering (According to professional reviews).

Other Thoughts: You're not going to enjoy playing any sophisticated games or playing HD movies fullscreen on this baby but there's more surfers than players anyways.

A Shout out to Intel: The next gen board to support dual head (Monitor and TV separate image), Something many laptops already do, it would fill the vacuum for cost effective specialty environments requiring TV out, in both Entertainment & Business Presentation.

Pros: It has enough power to decode MKV H264 1080p movies at 24 frames per second running coreavc pro codec on media player classic. The CPU runs at 60~70%. Don't need the extra graphics card saving power and money! For the same movie file encoded on mpeg2, the CPU utilization is about 15%.

I have a mATX/ITX chassis with some room for air circulation. I replaced the CPU fan with more quieter one and I removed the chassis fan to be more quiet and power efficient. It is running very quiet and cool while decoding 1080p h264 movies. The temp reading is about 30~40 degrees.

My HTPC system with 2GB memory, 1TB hard drive, >80% efficient power supply, chassis and the mobo only costs little over $300!

I don't have the kill-a-watt to measure the power usage but based on the others posting, it should be running around 40 watt. This is probably lower than the notebook power consumption!

Cons: My VGA port is little noisy but no big deal.

Pros: The board is small, energy efficient and pretty powerful for its price. Sadly, I ordered the BLK board, which did not come with the box, therefore I missed out on the I/O shield, a sata cable, driver cd, and whatever goodies you get with this bundle. No regrets.

This is my build for just under 250$:
This Motherboard
APEX MI-100 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811154084)
WD 640gb SATA HDD (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136218)
CORSAIR 2GB DDR2-667 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145180)

Cons: Would have been nice if there was no need for a fan on the chipset's heatsink. But why not replace this 945gc with a more modern chipset? I guess Intel wants you to purchase their more expensive Mini-ITX boards for those who want or require more power.

Other Thoughts: Easily has enough juice to run a 720p MKV version of Constantine using Media Player Classic (loads less than 50%). My 1080p MKV of Batman Begins ran, but was choppy to the point of being unwatchable. Maybe if I find a media program that can distribute the load over the 4 cores (HT), it'll be able to run... Maybe it was due to me using Vista Ultimate; perhaps a lighter OS like XP will run the MKV without incident. I'll keep you guys posted.
Vista Scores for those wondering:
Processor- 4.3
Memory- 4.5 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145180)
Graphics- 4.1
Gaming graphics- 2.8
The board boots vista in less than 35 seconds to desktop. This is faster than my E8400 @ 4.0ghz. Pretty nice, although that may be due to BIOs self tests, etc.

You can easily build a computer with those motherboard for under 250$; if you don't need to play Crysis or run Photoshop, get this board. It has more than enough power for the average user.

The Streamzap currently works without any tinkering, I'd hope that would still be true with R6.