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OK..... I've seen two and don't know what each of them have to offer over one another. I wasn't looking at making this a DVR box, but more of a computer that's capable of running Movies and music with a very slick looking interface.

XBMC and Mythbuntu.... any takes on these or is there a better alternative. Whats the + and the - of them for those of you who have hands on experience with them.

Ubuntu with Boxee on top.

Never heard of XBMC. Mythbuntu will generally have the same pros and cons that Ubuntu has. On the plus side, it should generally be easier to set up and maintain than most other distros, especially if you're coming from a Windows background; and there's a large user base (so you're more likely to be able to find help online). On the minus side, Ubuntu (and by extension Mythbuntu) tends to be pretty bleeding edge, with half-baked (or even quarter-baked) features sometimes making it into official releases. If you're not planning to move on this immediately, you might want to consider waiting for 10.04 (due in April); this is one of Ubuntu's "long term support" releases (which they do every couple of years). LTS releases focus more on stability than bleeding edge features.

Welch wrote:

XBMC and Mythbuntu.... any takes on these or is there a better alternative. Whats the + and the - of them for those of you who have hands on experience with them.

If you're just doing media playback and don't need the DVR functionality, XBMC is much better than MythTV. The interface is a lot nicer and it's easier to configure and manage. You can run XBMC on top of plain Ubuntu (or any distro of choice). Boxee is a fork of XBMC and it's supposedly pretty good too but I don't have any firsthand experience.