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Will follow your spec but since I really want a small format box, I will need to pay special attention to heat dissapation and energy consumption.



There are several smaller and attractive cases made by Coolermaster and the like meant for specifically this that use as micro-ATX motherboard. You can get decent micro-ATX boards, though obviously selection will be limitted.

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So software I use is the Intervideo WinDVD and the WinDVR. Its a no brainer (like me) and all the audio/video hookups and decoding work great and with ease. I know the DSCALER can give a slightly better picture but the interface can be difficult.



Do you have any trouble seeing the interface cues on the TV. PC text can be a little weird with this sort of thing and the actual control elements can be hard to work with, or at least I expect them to be. It doesn't sound like you have much trouble with that though, which is enouraging.

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I though it would pipe through the analog output of the speaker section.



Your computer is a digital entity. Anything that exists in it will be a digital signal. As such, it's relatively trivial for your computer to passthrough all audio through the SPDIF, including your cable signal, should you so choose.

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Most of the smaller boxes come with proprietory power supplies which are all noisy. Small fans spinning fast with high pitched shreik. Had to disconnect the 12V fan and splice hard drive power connectors and figure out the 5V power leads. When all the fans were running 5V rather than 12v. They were spinnin slower but were almost dead silent. The air dissipation was good enough to get the hot air out of box generated by the hard drive, TV tuner card, VIA C3-933, EPIA V series mobo and the DVD rom.



It's a little absurd that only the most expensive manufacturers take sound into consideration. However, it sounds like you have it under control.

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I hope the power supply is not as loud as my current one. But its spec since it is a 150w could be underpowered (300w is minumum I'm thinking) and as noisy as my older box. Higher CPU and better video card will give me some issues with the small box. I have to be able to cool the thing without excessive noise. Since it will be front center with the rest of the audio pieces it also has to note WAF into consideration.



I would also be leary of that PSU, especially if you go with a P4 or something similar. 300W is even getting to the point of not quite being enough, depending on what hardware you have installed. The power consumption of these computers is getting to be absurd.

BTW, you can get those same cube cases from several others. Do a search of cube computers on the ArsTechnica Case forum.

Regards,
Semi