which distro to go with?

[us11csalyer]

I'm building a cheap htpc for my garage so I can watch the news, listen to music and browse a few car forums when needed.

here are the specs im looking at

2 512mb ddr2 800
AMD Athlon II X2 240 Regor 2.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W
500GB sata2 or 32gb ssd drive

Will Ubuntu be able to use a ssd? If so this box can pull movies in from my server.

Which distro will play movies, watch live tv, and play music the best on the specs I provided?

[Irithori]

SSD shouldnt be a problem.
Your specs should do the job, if you add a decent graphiccard.

I built myself a htpc with a board like these:
Newegg.com - atom ion

aka: atom n330 with an ion graphiccard (that is: a nvidia 9400)
I added 4gb, a bluray drive, a boot harddisc and 2x 2TB in a softraid1
This hardware is just enough to do FullHD.

As mediacenter, I have chosen XBMC
Probably because I use xbmc since the XBox 1 times.

Here is a nice step-by-step, after that even digital audio passthrough works.
Installing XBMC and Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) desktop on Acer Aspire Revo 3610 - XBMC Community Forum

[us11csalyer]

I guess I should add this will be used on a 32" lcd hd tv.

[Irithori]

The atom+ion boards have hdmi.
If your lcd TV has that connector, it will work.

It also offers hdcp, so with a windows dualboot + a commercial blurayplayer software, you are able to watch blurays.

Havent catched up the latest development, but I guess linux is left in the cold then it comes to bluray playback.
At least officially :P

Note:
If you go dualboot,
the data should be on ntfs or on a network share, so that both OSs have access.
FAT32 is no good anymore, just think of the 4gb filesize limit.

Also (in my setup) I wouldn´t use that linux software raid, as windows cannot handle it.
I would probably go for a network share