"Innovative cases and power supplies allow these systems to be used in cars, kiosks, digital signage and other places. Essentially, they permit embedded applications and appliance computing where you need the power of a PC, but not the size, noise and heat."

He's chosen the VIA EPIA SP13000 compact Mini-ITX form factor board for the project due to the integrated VIA padlock cryptography system, although there's no specifics on how this enriches the PVR (Personal Video Recorder) end result. Nevertheless the guide takes you on a fantastic little journey from hardware setup right through to installing iMEDIA Linux as the operating system.  What you end up with - should you follow everything to the letter - is a video recording platform that fits snugly into your family room, with the appearance of a set-top box, rather than an actual PC, but offering all the features of the latter.