Topic: Firewire and video
Your hardware appears to be very similar to the NSLU2. A lot of interesting things have been done with the NSLU2. http://www.nslu2-linux.org/
Two more ports, Ethernet and Firewire, would greatly broaden the application of this device for video purposes. The NSLU2 is missing a Firewire port. New cable boxes in the US are required (you may have to ask for the right box) to work over Firewire. You can tune and record the channels using the Firewire port. The demand on the Chumby hardware is not that high, you just record the MP4 stream off from the Firewire and onto the USB disk, there is no need to decode it. For playback you run a UPNP AV server and the MP4 is streamed back out unchanged. Ethernet is not required but it is useful since it is unreliable to stream video over wireless connections. Can you get USB, Firewire and Ethernet all in the same chip? AFAIK no cheap embedded type device exists with a Firewire port.