Great work delving into this stuff. Thanks for all the posts.

This impresses me more and more as if it is shipping with a
product demonstration kernel that Realtek ships with its
development boards -

*Not* a 'built for general release' kernel.

This may have been a:
“get it on the shelves in time for the holidays; we'll fix it later”
sort of development project at ASUS.

4) Get lucky in searching the ASUStek support forum
for the directions on how to do it.

These people (ASUStek) really, really, need to hire a Linux consultant!

Yes, it does ntfs, fat, ext2/ext3 and several others (MAC formats?).
It should also do iso9660 but appears to be broken in the 1.07n firmware build.

The GPL_Release file *does not* include the kernel source code.
Hello? ASUS?

Same Realtek processor, same Linux kernel -
This box has the card readers and wifi mounted.
Costs about half again as much as the ASUS.

It might suit the end-user who is only familiar with media
appliances but people who expect a “computer user interface”
are going to be disappointed.
I was expecting at least a simplified version of their original
EeePC interface. This box has enough resources to do it easily.

The device does not write an error log that the user can view
and of course, none but a hacker will hook up an external
console terminal where they can see the error messages.

I have captured hours of those console messages to a file I can
study so I can say that the kernel build and software image needs
a lot more work.

For instance:
A person buys a “media player” with connections to a USB drive -
How many would expect to be able to plug in their external DVD drive -
Insert a DVD and watch it?
Or an audio CDROM and listen to it?

Mine will not do that – although it may be “user error” here.
According to the error messages, it is just a missing kernel module
in the firmware package (oops).
If that is the only reason, something ASUS can fix in less than a day.

There are a lot of such things shown in the error logs – the Linus build
looks to be not much better than “Working Prototype”.
*AND* the box can update its firmware from an ASUS image -
so one can hope that ASUS will be posting updates that fix those problems.

There are drivers in the build for at least three models of Realtek Wifi
chips – plugging in the right USB-Wifi dongle might “just work” -
but then again, it might not. I don't have one to try.

I don't see any drivers for TV tuners in the image – so I don't expect my
USB-TV tuner to “just work”. That will take an updated firmware image
and probably a lot of work to extend the on-screen menu system.

The shipping the device without password protection for the 'root' user
account (what Linux calls the 'administrator') I consider a serious fault.

End users will want to be sure that incoming connections to telnet are
blocked at their firewall (in your modem/router/gateway/whatever).
They will also probably want to block incoming connections to the
http server in the box also.
But having a http server running in the box opens up the possibility
of a web-based interface to your media player – not just on-screen.

ASUS did not include any of the iptables stuff (the Linux firewall)
in the build. So although the box has network connectivity, it
can not 'defend itself' – I consider that another serious fault.

But at least ASUS is consistent, they didn't do that for the EeePC either.

So much for the “insider report” – Brad, you can use any of this information
in your “outsider report” .