OSS emulation afaik broken. ALSA works. for correct ALSA device manage,
look in aplay program from alsa utils.

500, 600, 7020 -> IBM powerPc hardware
500 made with low-end chip STB25xxx, 1 demux etc, low memory (32mb),
small flash (8mb), 8 bit graphics only, no internal hdd and so on

7020 has about 64mb of ram, nand flash 32mb, "high"-end chip STB04xxx with 3 ? demuxes (2 supported by drivers), 32bit graphics,
hdd.

both have linux-dvb-api2 drivers.

afaik not clear, what 600 will have.

7025 is total different and have very big potencial.
based on mips xilleon 226 cpu, 300mhz, can decode 2 mpeg2 streams with current drivers (== hardware PiP),
2 tuners, faster graphics subsystem, better as 7020 network card, more RAM (~70mb for user-space).
drivers about to confirm linux-dvb-api3 standart.

> I am a Linux programmer, so I expect to adapt to the technology quickly.

get 7025, if you can afford it. software a bit poor, but hardware much better
than 7020.

with latest (20070312) drivers box not hangs, but kernel crashing in xilleon driver
using -s pidscan. other features of dvbsnoop seems to work.