Pros: Excellent aesthetics; looks great. About the same size as the ReplayTV 4500 that it will replace. Love the slot-load drive, the VFD screen, the built-in 802.11g and bluetooth 2.0. The heatsink was easy to install; see below. The optical/coax digital outputs work well, as does the VGA output. Using a 45w X2 cpu, a WDC 1TB low-power (5400rpm) drive and 1GB of RAM builds a very quiet system that provides adequate cooling even in a warm room. *easy* to put on if you use a small slot screwdriver in the 'slot hole' on one side: hook in the other side, rotate the HS on top of the cpu, apply a little pressure to spread the

Cons: Smart fan keeps the system too warm; disabled the case is over-ventilated. System is quiet in both cases but more quiet with smart fan enabled. BIOS 1.6 does not recognize the X2 4850e cpu; the BE-2400 is ok. Confirmed with MSI support: HDMI does NOT work prior to the OS loading the NVidia driver, and HDMI is only good to 1920x1080i. The manual v1.1 from MSI website is wrong (pg 2-11). The lack of 1920x1080p support is quite unfortunate, as this is the native resolution for most HD displays nowadays. The HDMI issue is possibly a show stopper; who wants to drag out a VGA monitor to solve an early boot problem on their HTPC? HDMI output is noticeably better than VGA (tested at 1600x1200 on a 20" LCD).

Overall Review: I'm conflicted about this barebone. It has some great positives, yet the HDMI negatives are significant. If there were a comparable HTPC case/barebone available that solved some of the more important cons without sacrificing the pros, I'd send this back in a heart-beat. Given the current state of things, I haven't decided yet. Runs Mythbuntu 8.04 pretty well. Playback of HD OTA streams up to 1080i work well, but audio can stutter with any overlay active (OSD, CC, etc.). MythTV for HD content is borderline on the internal NVidia chipset (6150LE, more or less).

Pros: It is a nice HTPC. It comes with everything you would need as HD HTPC: HDMI, 8 channel audio, quiet. With some minor tweaks, it is running very smoothly.

Cons: It takes lots of time and work to tweak this platform to work well. First of all, you need to dump the heatsink that comes with the machine. My heatsink failed after just 2 months of running (yes, I kept the machine on 24x7) with the 65W AMD Brisbane 5000+. I finally have to buy another cheap heatsink and it works fine. Yes, the default heatsink is quiet but a cheap heatsink is probably still quieter than the harddisk. Second, if you want to hook up the machine to your own AV Receiver, you need to first upgrade your BIOS. The platform shipped with some old BIOS that has bugs in the audio connection. Also, you need to go into the BIOS and disable the 8 channel audio in order to let the AV Receiver takes over the audio processing and nowhere in the documentations mention about this. Also, the machine comes with bluetooth hardware but no bluetooth software. So make sure you download the correct driver and software from MSI web site.

Overall Review: I added a Hauppage HD TV tuner and this machine runs well as the HTPC in the living room. 802.11b isn't enough for streaming HD content from another machine so you would either use the GigE or add a 802.11n for HD streaming. Also, the HDMI port doesn't output 1080p (only 1080i) and it would be much better if it could do 1080p.

Pros: Works out-of-the-box with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gusty Gibbon) VFD (display) is supported with beta drivers for Linux (only getting better with time) Quiet Fan, passes the 6-foot test for silence. MythTV works on it. LIRC and the included MCE USB type 2 IR remote control works with it. Gigabit Ethernet. Many video and audio out options on the back which work well with stereo equipment... it even has HDMI output for HD, although I have not tested this one. DVD burner included. The computer looks like a stereo-quality DVD player.

Cons: DVD drive sounds like a jet taking off when running. (Maybe there is a way to keep it to 1X to silence it?) Custom Heatsink is difficult to put on, and according to AMD, any other heatsink than the one AMD provides with the retail box voids your CPU warrenty. Motherboard shipped with the orginal v1.0 Engineering BIOS version, quickly fixable by going to MSI's web page and flashing the MB... but annoying/disturbing.

Overall Review: This may be the perfect MythTV frontend box. The only one that beats this, IMO, is the HUSH fanless PVR (of course it is 10 times the price!) It has a slot loaded DVD burner and hidden front mounted USB/Firewire/Card Reader ports. It is quiet, powerful, and supported by a quality Linux distro. The AMD processor and motherboard BIOS allow for fan management and CPU throttling... resulting in less heat, noise, and energy use. The VFD will be perfect for PVR use, displaying all the info on what is being recorded or streamed once the driver matures (and other machines use this Futaba VFD so one can expect further development.) I feel this is a good item that is clearly marketed at the tech-geek wanting to make their own PVR/TiVo.

Pros: This is a great little box to stuff the innards of your HTPC into. Not having to search around for cables to connect various types of cameras and media is wonderful thanks to the 7-in-1 card reader. As always the aesthetics are wonderful and I always get comments about how guests in my home "Can't believe that it's a computer!" Plenty of I/O options

Cons: Refraining from repeating the main issues (like the stupid heatsink)... the slot loading DVD-RW is nice, but I'd rather see the inclusion or addition for a faster drive.. slim or otherwise. The display unit was less than I expected. Only displays info if using windows media center, otherwise it's just a clock... and you can't program it to do/display something else. Graphics card is definately lacking.. and no AGP or PCIe support.

Overall Review: Supports a boatload of info with my 4GB of PC2-6400 RAM, AMD 64 x2 4600+ cpu, two 1TB sata hard drives, and hauppage HVR PCI addon card, giving me what I need. Very flexible with outputs. Everything has pros and cons, this machine definitely outweighs the cons with pros and is a nice buy.

Pros: Perfect size to integrate into a home theater system. Looks like it belongs in a home theater rack. Has every hookup that is required. Very versatile.

Cons: System overheats when installed in a home theater rack. IR remote has poor reception. CPU heatsink nearly impossible to get properly installed. Ships with a pre-production BIOS. nVidia driver/chipset doesn't detect TV identification correctly. CD/DVD eject button very hard to press. I have had 3 units now, 2 DOA and now this last one is starting to turn off by itself.

Overall Review: Bought this to build my Mythbuntu/MythTV system. I had a miserable time getting the HDMI to output anything above 720p, 1080i only works till the system is rebooted then it detect the TV incorrectly and disables the HDMI. It is ashame that it has inadequate cooling for it to be placed in a rack/shelving unit.

Pros: Looks great, has built in DVD drive

Cons: The built in graphics chip is really bad with Vista Ultimate. I loaded XP media center 2005 and it works much better. It also get really hot if I put it in a cabnet with the rest of my equipment. I have to put it on outside the cabnet and on top so it stays cool

Overall Review: MSI really needs to upgrade the graphics chip on this machine or offer a motherboard replacement for everyone that already bought one. If you are building an HTPC for Vista do NOT buy this one. If you are using XP Media center it works great.

Pros: - excellent form factor and hardware support for MythTV as a media frontend - nearly every possible television and sound output (except coaxial), which all seem to work out-of-box on BIOS boot - integrated wireless (802.11g-capable), LCD, IR remote control sensor, DVD - very quiet (not silent) operation, even at high usage - two HDD mounting bays, and even a PCI card bay (untested) - included remote control has glow-in-the-dark buttons

Cons: - tempermental BIOS utility - the integrated heat sync being "difficult to install" is an understatement - installation manual thick, but largely useless

Overall Review: I'm burning in a test unit as a MythTV frontend, currently running MythBuntu. Historically, I've been a fan of the Shuttle form factors and machines for backends and frontends. I may have been seduced by the slim form-factor for this build, but I must say that I'm impressed by the overall usability. The unit contains a good amount of the required equipment for a frontend (sufficient wireless, IR reciever, DVD reader) to make it a very appealing choice. The nVidia chipset chosen handles video output so well, I didn't even need an external monitor to run the setup. Both SVIDEO (for standard) and HDMI (for HD) worked at BIOS boot. I appreciated a fellow reviewer's comment that the heatsync/fan was "difficult to install," but this was a massive understatement. The installation instructions are largely useless in this, most important of procedures. I intend to add some help instructions on the MythTV wiki. Your choice of USB keyboard can cause BIOS config problems.

Pros: Excellent case design and internal layout. Fits 2 hard drives nicely. OCZ reaper ram heatpipe heatsinks fit. stays cool. many output connections.

Cons: fans are noisy. difficult cpu cooler install. non-solid caps on the motherboard. only 1 pci. plastic front bezel. buggy graphics chip.

Overall Review: This is a real nice barebones unit. 1 major issue with this unit is the graphics chipset. it may be a driver issue but media center will only display if its running 1024x768 resolution or less.