And so it is that I bid a fond farewell to my HD1000. It's died for the third time and quite frankly, I've gotten tired of fixing it or rather hearing from my SO that the Roku is broke again. Such a nice product, too bad it was totally abandoned by Roku. And the new Roku products are crippled and much too limiting for me.
It's replacement is an AppleTV running Mythbuntu using atv-bootloader (that's developed by me by the way) see http://code.google.com/p/atv-bootloader/ if you are interested. Mythbuntu can handle 1080i mpeg2 using XvMC (another solution of mine) plus it's a real mythfrontend. Other options include XBMC for Linux, Boxee (Linux) and soon XBMC for Mac and Boxee (Mac) running under the AppleTV OS as a launch-able application. And of course, just about any other Linux distro you might want to install.
$199 refurbished from the Apple Store. Refurbished items at the Apple store carry the same warrantee as new and both of the ones I got I were packaged and looked just like a new one. This is a great deal with respect to the hardware. I've never found any thing in a similar physical size, noise output and video/audio/network capabilities that offers a better solution or price point.
This bring the total up to three, my original one that I cracked open and swap hard drives for AppleTV hardware/software development . Since I've created atv-bootloader, one does not have to open up AppleTVs any more to install AppleTV plugins or install/boot Linux distros so the two new ones will stay sealed.
Scott