iMac G3 600 reccomended setup for video

Hi folks, I've just moved to Singapore from the states and am waiting for my stuff to get to here via boat. I wanted to get a TV and build a cheep atom+ion machine to stream video to my bedroom, but the prices on electronics here are ludicrous.

So I had an idea of using my old 600mhz G3 iMac in my bedroom to watch video content stored on my home server. Machine has 10.4, 1gb ram, 40gb 7.2k drive.

My homeserver runs Windows Home Server 2008 streaming via Twonky Media Server to my UPnP devices (Ps3, Boxee on ATV, 360, etc) and it would be nice to use for SD content on the iMac.

This machine has the original 802.11b Airport card, and I don't know of any UPnP clients that will work on PPC, not to mention it would no doubt be too slow on this connection. The onboard NIC doesn't work.

So here's the questions:

1. Anyone know of a UPnP client that will work on a G3. Even if it has local media reading abilities similar to Boxee or XBMC that would be great.

2. Any recommendations to help this little guy actually playback video smoothly? I hear Panther is a better bet for performance, I'm open to Ubuntu as well if there's a noticeable performance boost.

In case anyone wants to try something like this, here's what I did to get it working:

Initially using the last PPC build of VLC (0.9.xxx), videos would have audio for a few seconds, no video, then the app would crash. Same with QT using Perian.

So, I reinstalled OS X 10.4 with the same results.

Finally, if you take a look at the changes made to VLC through the years, you'll find a lot of updates to OpenGL in the past few years. Going to the archives and using a version from around 2006 (0.8.4ish) videos playback perfectly fine.

Forget HD video of course, but for those long insomniac nights, this works perfectly as a low end entertainment center in a bedroom.