A while back, I built myself a ’set top box’ based on an Epia 800 motherboard and various other bits and pieces from LinITX.com. It runs Red Hat 8.0 Linux, and I’ve used it to do a lot of investigation into video formats and playback, amongst other things. But it’s never really found a place in my life — the processor is a bit slow to use it as a compact workstation, and it won’t (quite) play back DVD-quality video. Today I has some time on my hands, so I’ve installed a wifi card, and with substantial help from the VIA Support Forums, reconfigured the audio subsystem to give me digital output (the analog out is foul). I’m using mplayer to tune into my streaming feed, and the output goes through my lovely Meridian 518 process or for dejittering, thence to my Yamaha AX-1. And the news is that the sound quality is surprisingly good — as good as I’ve ever heard 256kbs MP3s sound in fact. Good enough to actually enjoy listening to, though obvously not up to the ancient Theta Data Universal that I use for CD playback. And even better, I can control the thing over the web using a slightly-hacked version of otto from my iPaq. It’s nice when things actually Just Work.