One of the most interesting (and nerdy) things you can find at this year’s show is from a small vendor called Vidtonic. Vidtonic is hopping on the Android bandwagon, but they are approaching it from a very different angle than everyone else.  While Motorola and others go to great pains to protect their hardware from hackers who want to modify the default OS or overclock their processors, Vidtonic aims to sell open source hardware units to this community, allowing them complete freedom to tinker in whatever way they wish.

Although specific kits and pricing aren’t yet nailed down, the general idea is that you’ll be able to buy a motherboard with CPU, memory and onboard audio/video. Inputs and outputs can be customized via add-on cards. Then you’ll be able to download the already freely distributed Google Android OS platform with the Linux drivers necessary for the Vidtonic board directly from them. From that point on, what you do with it is only limited by your time and creativity.

Vidtonic will even provide a higher end SKU which comes with a display and and the electronics mentioned above.

It’s Lego Mindstorm for AV hackers. The ultimate promise here is obvious. Ground zero of the media center STB scene started with a community of Xbox hackers in the early 2000’s who built Xbox Media Center (XBMC) to provide a platform for an all-in-one media box for the living room. While Sony and Logitech are putting tons of investment into Google TV, it’s this ‘crowdsourcing’ approach to feature development that has historically provided the best solutions and the most innovation.

When the SageTV, MythTV and current Android hacking communities get their hands on these units we’ll see a wave of incredibly innovative applications for media hubs.