Forgive me, I'm a Mac user, so not really up to speed on what I should be looking for in terms of PC hardware....

I've just been given an old Dell - it's a 2.8GHz Pentium 4. It's sitting under my telly acting as a useful home server, but I was wondering if it would have enough grunt to play HD video given a suitable graphics card.

Caveats are - it only has PCI slots, no AGP or PCI-E, and I'm running Mint Linux on it, so anything recommended would need (I guess) Ubuntu compatibility.

Am I dreaming here, or does anyone have a suggestion?

You sure?

Because that'd be a if true

In that case, it's

Dell aren't exactly known for living life on the cutting edge...

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119724

Note the comment:

Cheers, JJW009. (Can I call you 9, for short?)

I'll check that out.

Any idea if that in a P4 will have enough oomph for 1080p to my TV?

I think that's probably the best you'll find. I'm just having a little look now to see what people say about playing HD video / Ubuntu support.

Note there's only DVI / VGA / S-Video output - no HDMI. I'm guessing you're using VGA at the moment, so the TV must have that? One thing's for sure - it'll never play Blue Ray.

CPU should be good enough provided you can get a player with hardware acceleration on that card. I'm using an Atom for the job which is less powerful.

*edit*

From the nvidea website:

"DVD and HDTV-ready MPEG-2 decoding up to 1920×1080i resolutions - Linux compatible - Complete Linux Xfree86 drivers"

So no promises from me, but it sounds good!

http://www.nvidia.com/page/pg_20040109440047.htm

Good to hear an Atom's up to the job - in that case a P4 should be enough with enough card power.

Lack of HDMI output isn't a problem - I'll use a DVI-HDMI cable. The TV has VGA, but the PC is running headless right now - I access it via VNC.

*edit* Just read your edit - that looks like a goer, then! Cheers