Laptops As Display Devices

["Andy Laurence" <andy@xxxxxxx>]

I've been looking into using old laptops as TFT TVs around the house.  I
don't watch live TV, as I have a (not hacked!) Tivo.  I originally thought
that MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org)
was my best bet allied with network
booting.  The reasons behind this were simple - no disks (silent), and the
ability to play video, images, and music from the TV (laptop), including
Tivo recordings (http://tivo-mplayer.sf.net).  Having
looked into this for
quite a while, I realise it would be a right royal PITA to create a network
booting image, a backend server, and hack the laptops.  I've decided to go
another route ... DOS!

The basic plan is to write a simple bit of DOS software that will display
graphical menus (bitmaps), and call a bit of software to play the
associated
file(http://multimediaware.com/qv/). 
Now, this sounds utterly simple, and
highly configurable to me.  I will be able to watch any recording from any
room in the house with a simple 5 button remote control.  The only issue
with it is that I will not play recordings directly from Tivo.

At college, I originally was going to be a developer, but somehow fell into
a sys admin role.  I'm more than capable of stringing together a bit of
simple software, but having never specialised in any language, don't have
the knowledge straight off.  Does anyone have any suggestions on a language
that will be simple to read text files, display images, and shell out to an
external program?  I have simple knowledge of a number of languages (BASIC
and Perl spring to mind), but can only do two of the three with either.
I'll learn the most appropriate language, or I'll look up how to display
images in Perl!

The last piece of the jigsaw is the lack of Tivo-playing ability.  There's
little point in a TV in each room if it can't play terrestrial TV!  I've
been looking at the Hauppauge Nova-T card (about £80 at http://www.dabs.com)
as it looks like you can record the MPEG2 stream directly to disk.  It
seems
to me that it shouldn't need much processing power at all to do this, just
a
speedy disk.  Am I right?  If I am heading in the right direction, is there
a piece of software that is nice and simple to install, and will let me set
season passes via a web interface?  That's all I do with Tivo, so that's
all
I need for this.  Any pointers would be great!

Cheers,
Andy (essay writer extroadinnaire)
--
http://ha.andylaurence.co.uk
http://projects.andylaurence.co.uk