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Try a free software version for your PC.

Skipping the previews and just playing the movie is a huge plus.
http://www.geexbox.org/download/

Or use a DVD player that is not blessed by the DVD consortium.

Is it so hard to make a DVD player that plays the movie when you put it in?

A No it is not hard, just not allowed.

http://www.geexbox.org/ Play your movie. The menu and extras can be viewed if desired.

This is exactly the question I was wondering. But why is it not allowed.

Because the Government likes to punish it's law abiding citizens.

Or use a DVD player that is not blessed by the DVD consortium.

Is it so hard to make a DVD player that plays the movie when you put it in?

A No it is not hard, just not allowed.

http://www.geexbox.org/ Play your movie. The menu and extras can be viewed if desired.

This is exactly the question I was wondering. But why is it not allowed.

Or use a DVD player that is not blessed by the DVD consortium.

Is it so hard to make a DVD player that plays the movie when you put it in?

A No it is not hard, just not allowed.

http://www.geexbox.org/ Play your movie. The menu and extras can be viewed if desired.

In fact, this would be the first stable release of the EFL libraries. I've been following the development of Enna, and the main branch would regularly break due to changes on the EFL API.

Pick up a player that is not licensed by the DVD Consortium. Players that are licensed by them are required to force several undesirable features on consumers. A software player that demonstrates this is GeexBox. The player does violate the DMCA in several countries as it does play encrypted DVD's.

I like it. Load the DVD and the movie plays. What a concept. If I want the menu or any of the other extras, I can choose to watch them later.
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html Note, the program does not include any copy functionality. The DMCA violation is simply decoding a DVD you bought to play it. Someone needs to fix this crazy law. It's broken.

There isn't a legal one. The DVD Consortium requires all licensed players to foster that crap on the public.

Moving to ones not blessed by the DVD consortium is a good option. GeexBox is a great one. Free to download. Insert the disk and the Movie plays. What a great concept. If you want the menu, warnings, previews etc, you can watch them later if you wish.
Be aware it may not be legal in your location. It does violate the DMCA by playing an encrypted movie.
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

Grab a copy of Geexbox if all you want is a linux media player. Boot it, remove it, and it plays almost everything you can throw at it. It may be a DMCA violation in your local as it does play DVD's without the DVD consortium's blessing or license. The only downside is it is keyboard navigation. The mouse is a paperweight in the program.
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

winXP resists being slimmed down

Meanwhile, there's GeeXboX, a whopping 20 Mb livecd, fully functional as a media center.

Geexbox is an excellent LiveCD media centre based on mplayer. Check it out, it rocks. Forget KB shortcuts; I use my ATI RF Remote with it. It even supports my TV card and allows me to watch TV. Network shares, local files, UPnP devices; they'll all work with Geexbox. They even have a customization gui that will remaster the iso with your personal pref.'s (runs in Linux or Windows).

TFA does not mention what is he using for graphical display. Framebuffer would be ideal choice, but Ubuntu for some reason blacklists framebuffer and having worked on similar project, I know that enabling framebuffer is kind of tricky on Ubuntu systems. For some reason, I always believed geexbox provides best trimmed kernel, fast bootable, and much better.

Geexbox is a portable version. Stick in it a PC, boot it, remove the ejected CD and insert the movie. It writes nothing to the hard drive leaving no recored of the DMCA violation.

http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html

As a bonus, it in an introduction to the many versions of Linux to non-geek types. Print up a few disks and pass them out at work.

Small PC of chioce + GeeXBoX

It's linux + mplayer

PS: please tag story as geexbox

Download a distro and pick up http://ushare.geexbox.org/, I had the same problem where an old Win to 360 streaming worked but then broke, this new configuration is all that has worked.

The rule is that if you are downloading files from a suspect place, it will have malware in it. I once downloaded something that had an impact both in Windows and Linux, it was a somewhat sophisticated design. (Basically, a payload of useless files that were treated as read only both by Windows and my Linux install.)

For MP3s? Well, you could always make MP3 CDs and DVDs out of them and play them one a CD/DVD player with MP3 capability. It won't be able to do anything to them, but it probably won't tell you if it is infected or not. You could also try something like a GeeXBox boot disk. Of course, caveat emptor on suspiscious MP3 files, here translated "let the downloader beware."

3) While these systems are essentially gaming pc's, Microsoft has them locked down so cool software hacks are tough. You should by rights be able to use these systems as media center pc's, streaming movies off your home PC. This only works if the movies are purchased from Microsoft stores, have WMA encryption, yadda yadda. Music and movies you torrented will not play. WMA-encrypted movies you have will only be streamable via media player 11 or better. You have the option of hacking this with a product called Tivosity but there are headaches associated with that, namely that you cannot seek within a video that is being transcoded on the fly. And there's other hacks you have to do to force a preemptive transcode of the movie so that you can play it for the first time and seek through it.

Uh huh. You do realize that hasn't been true since November, right? Ever since the last fall update the Xbox 360 has been perfectly capable of playing most of the Divx/Xvid encoded AVIs I've thrown at it without transcoding. If you have a linux box to feed it content you can use ushare to serve it up with UPnP headers that the Xbox 360 understands, without transcoding. Supposedly you're also supposed to be able to burn avi files to a disc or put them on a USB storage device of some sort and play them off of that, but I haven't tried that yet.

I don't think so. He needs at least a year and a half (6/08-1/10) to budget for his media center. If he's a shill, he's certainly not doing a good job. Apparently the cost of Vista + the required hardware to run it well is just too much for him to handle. I build media stuff out of spare parts or with more expensive but tiny MBs. Geexbox has extremely modest requirements, though.

Have you tried using uShare? I compiled and installed it on my Gentoo box in less than five minutes, wrote a small init script, and can now access all of my movies and music on the Xbox 360 in my living room.

I previously had a large HTPC running MythTV as a media extender. Needless to say, it was loud, hot, and never worked well, due to MythTV's awful interface. After I discovered I could use the 360 for the same task, I was able to free up a bunch of space in my TV cabinet.

I'm going to promote GeexBox. It uses almost no resources, is light on the hard disk, and can use uPnP with ushare on the server to share music and videos.

Linux can't *ship* the necessary codecs, but they are extremely easy to get installed within the first 5 minutes of using the computer.

Playing DVD's on Ubuntu is illegal in many places due to the DMCA and the use of an unauthorised decoder that breaks the encryption protecting a copyrighted work. So far it hasn't been challanged in court, but it could lead to RIAA style lawsuits. Getting caught is probably the hard part as there is no online presense. Geexbox is the safer option than an installed version because you can rip DVDs with Acidrip which shows intent where Geexbox is a bootable player with no option to save the decoded DVD. As such, it is shown to be a player and not a encrypted DVD ripper. In court, it is still not legal in many places the DMCA is in force.

Pick up a copy here;
http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html

I use it on Winows boxes where the built in player is hosed. Boot it, use it, give a copy to the owner. It shows many Windows users that Linux works.

umm... that's exactly what I've been doing since the Fall update. They added MPEG4 (and some others) support. A little while later, uShare has been patched to serve these. Ever since I've been ripping my DVD collection with mencoder and have nearly filled up my shiny new Christmas present

Just a heads up for some poeple who intend to use the Xvid support but want to stream. The 360 requires a UPnP server to do it, they prefer you use Windows Media Center or whichever version of Vista does that. However, there are several other alternatives. The one I was able to get work best on FreeBSD (actually, the only one to work on FreeBSD) was ushare. There are several other options for linux, as well as windows and OSX.

If Microsoft fed the poor, people would complain that they only got rice and not a side of french fries. No matter what Microsoft does, people complain.


When a product is sold as a media platform and it is incapible of the task, then yes people complain. In the meantime, I boot Geexbox instead. It works.

http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

The best part is it isn't blessed by the DVD consortium and doesn't follow the hardware compliance specifications.

(It doesn't play the FBI warning, previews, menu and "Don't steal this film" first. It plays the movie! I heard it ignores the region, but I haven't confirmed it. I can look at that other stuff after the movie if I want to.)

Do you have a ton of crapware on there?

It is an HP. Is that a retorical question?

What are you talking about?

HP help desk, health check, AV update check, .... About a half dozen pre-installed helpful useless tidbits to make life easer.

you're using some craptastic 3rd party player

It's the default HP media player. It launches when a DVD is inserted. I agree, it is craptastic, but it's the default and we have not had the time to figure out how to change all the wrong defaults.

Of course Vista works with dual monitors

Sorry, my bad. I changed lanes without signalling. I was back to Geexbox. Does it support dual monitors?
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

I use it all the time on my laptop (Ubuntu) as it plays DVDs just fine while not conforming to the DVD consortium demands of DVD players. The best feature is it plays the movie. If I want the menu, previews, FBI warning, or "Don't steal this film" short, I can watch them later if I want. Geexbox may be the fix to the Vista machine and playing DVDs. It works fine on my laptop with selecting internal (laptop) screen and an external monitor, but I have not tested if it is able to do dual monitor setup with control on one monitor and the presentaion on the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Forum

I'd rather have a small violation of a non-legit codec then to have this ginormous company that was convicted of illegal monopolistic predatory practices telling me what I can and can't do with my computer.

Download the ISO. Burn it to a CD. Boot the CD and wait for it to eject. Remove the CD and load a DVD. Enjoy. When done, eject the DVD and select "Exit". This entire operation leaves no trace or record on your hard drive.

http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html

With Vista taking forever to boot up, the CD boot is faster. If all I want to do is watch a movie, the CD boot is the best choice. The codec and player are not compliant with the DVD consortium which is a good thing. Put in the DVD and watch the movie instead of the FBI warning and "Don't steal this film".

a) watch a DVD that I purchased legally on my television via the TV-Out port on my video card, using my computer's DVD drive to read this legal DVD? Macrovision prevents that. There are ways around it, but they are illegal due to the DMCA.

Have you tried it with GeeXbox?
http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

They don't mention it is illegal in some countries in the about page.
On my video card, it does not enable Macrovision as that would require a royalty.

If you want to try an alternative DVD player, you can download one here;
http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html
It installs nothing on your computer. Just boot the CD. After booting, it gives you the CD back. Now put in a DVD.. Enjoy. It has no tools for copying a DVD. Why is this player illegal? It breaks encryption to play the movie that you physicaly have, just like a legal player.

In their about page, they don't bother to mention that this player is illegal to use in the USA due to the inclusion of software to decode the Content Scrambling System CSS used on commercial DVD's. They also don't mention the legal problmes with the software as it skips playing the mandatory FBI warning as required by all licensed leagal players.
http://geexbox.org/en/start.html
In rebellion against the control, try an alternative player. You may like it.

If you want to try an alternative DVD player, you can download one here;
http://geexbox.org/en/downloads.html
It installs nothing on your computer. Just boot the CD. After booting, it gives you the CD back. Now put in a DVD.. Enjoy. It has no tools for copying a DVD. Why is this player illegal? It breaks encryption to play the movie that you physicaly have, just like a legal player.

In their about page, they don't bother to mention that this player is illegal to use in the USA due to the inclusion of software to decode the Content Scrambling System CSS used on commercial DVD's. They also don't mention the legal problmes with the software as it skips playing the mandatory FBI warning as required by all licensed leagal players.
http://geexbox.org/en/start.html
In rebellion against the control, try an alternative player. You may like it.

Xbox 360 upscales DVDs and video files/streams to 1080i just great.

Only if you use the VGA cable. There's no upscaling on the standard component connection. Not sure about the Elite's HDMI connection.

It is very unfortunate that it only support streaming from Windows based computers, but that's a side effect of it being made by Microsoft.

Not so. The Xbox 360 acts as a standard UPnP streaming media consumer. Any software that can stream music or videos to a UPnP media client can feed the 360. In Windows, that would be WMP11 or Windows Media Connect. On Mac, Connect360 works just fine. On Linux, you can use GeeXbox uShare. The 360 still mostly prefers Microsoft-specific formats (though it should do h.264 now), but as long as you have media in a format it wants it's not difficult to serve it up.

There's no question that the PS3 has a ton more potential for new games than the Xbox 360 has. Unfortunately potential means jack and shit if you don't have the games and the features, so lets just see if they can deliver.

I'm not sure I'd say "a ton", though the BD format does have some potential over what the 360 can provide. Technically, the 360 and the PS3 are pretty much on par, with the PS3 being just slightly more powerful and the 360 being easier/nicer to work with. The 360's biggest asset is Xbox Live, and I just don't see Sony catching up any time soon (they killed themselves last generation when they refused to define a real online strategy and just gave up the market to Xbox Live). I could see a crazy future where full retail games are delivered via Xbox Live, stored on hard drives, and swapped around with the 360's removable hard drive.

I just found http://ushare.geexbox.org/ which claims to be able to stream WMV files to the Xbox 360. There are some other third party windows clients as well.

I didn't go looking for a Linux-based UPnP media server that can support the Xbox 360 when I posted my previous comment here, though I posited that such software must exist. Today, I accidentally stumbled across the answer: GeeXboX uShare.

While it's intended for GeeXboX, it apparently supports the Xbox 360 (not surprisingly, since the Xbox 360 looks just like a "normal" UPnP media device). I haven't tried it so I can't say how well it works, but it closes the gap. There are now media-serving options for your Xbox 360 from Windows, OSX, and Linux.

I didn't go looking for a Linux-based UPnP media server that can support the Xbox 360 when I posted my previous comment here, though I posited that such software must exist. Today, I accidentally stumbled across the answer: GeeXboX uShare.

While it's intended for GeeXboX, it apparently supports the Xbox 360 (not surprisingly, since the Xbox 360 looks just like a "normal" UPnP media device). I haven't tried it so I can't say how well it works, but it closes the gap. There are now media-serving options for your Xbox 360 from Windows, OSX, and Linux.

You misunderstand me. I mean major processors fully relying on this sort of method such as the PowerPC. Of the things you mentioned, only the Cell is actually a truly modern thing (which, btw, I hear is basically a PowerPC style chip.) Instructions like MMX are definitely useful, but, does the processor rely on them almost exclusively? You see, the almost pure SIMD processors run far slower and rely on getting a lot of stuff done at once while the x86 architecure we're so used to runs blazing fast and gets by only doing a few things at once and sometimes even dragging down to just one thing at a time. Each system has its ups and downs really, and I don't really know why the SIMD focused processors seemed to be getting less popular lately in the non-mobile/embedded fields.

PS. Decoding many video formats like DivX, if I recall correctly, doesn't actually get to take advantage of CPU optimizations very much. Oh, I'm sure there's a little, but, generally speaking, decoding video is going to be more a matter of just raw processing. Oh well, I don't have any benchmarks handy, though I can point out that I have personally played some relatively high resolution DivX files on a Pentium 2 running at 166, 233, and 266MHz (I just underclocked to 166 for support for old dos games that crash on a too fast system, so when I remembered I'd switch to 266MHz for things like video watching. 233 was it's stock speed, so I tested that first. And yes, I have an unlocked P2 chip even though it wasn't "hacked" to be unlocked.) P2 definitely lacks SSE2. Supposedly GeeXboX can play DVDs on a 400MHz Pentium 2 in fact, all without SSE2 (since I have only the 266MHz P2 and a 500MHz P3, I can't directly verify this, but, I can say that user posts in the forums would seem to support this.)

Actually, if you want to see something interesting, take a look at the geexbox requirements yourself. Note that for the Macintosh they say only a G3 is actually required (albiet a strong recommendation for a G4.) I haven't exactly searched terribly extensively, but, I see that they have Macintosh G3s running at 266MHz with a 66MHz bus (same as that P2 come to think of it.) Yet that thing is supposed to be able to manage DVD playback (albiet probably with occasional skips) when the P2 stuttered like crazy. No, I don't deny for a second that they have advantages when properly used.

The survey did bring up three issues which should be addressed by the embedded linux community, whether those issues are misconceptions or actual problems. 1) Incompatibility with software, applications, and drivers. 2) Performance or real time capability. And 3) support."

The points are somewhat valid. I've used a few embedded style solutions such as GeeXboX.

Firstly, they rely on being minimalistic first and foremost. This means removal of unnecessary things which could use up more space and resources such as X.org for many of them. They remove a lot of things not absolutely required for the product. To that end, the first point, incompatibility applies. A lot of other software will fail to function correctly or even perhaps to run at all. Usually the saved resources are worth it, but, it does make it a LOT harder to integrate major changes such as using a new program for some part or other. This encourages the reuse of already in place stuff. For example, for the sake of maintaining the current setup, interface, software, etc, GeeXboX is using mplayer for TV rather than some of the other more popular utilities such as MythTV and one that I thought looked pretty promising to replace a lot of GeeXboX's functionality, FreeVO.

Well, my first point kind of brushes on the second point made above on performance. In fact, #2 is way off base with a real embedded linux solution. Due to the minimalistic nature of the systems, they actually perform BETTER at what they were made to do. It's only things they were not where they will do worse. For example, GeeXboX's official requirements are listed as:
* x86 Pentium-Class CPU or above (P2-400 should be quite enough) or Macintosh G3 (G4 highly recommended)
* a VESA 2.0 compliant graphics card (for x86 PC only).
* an ALSA compatible sound card.
* at least 64 MB of RAM
* CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
* Motherboard which supports booting on CD-ROM (should be ok for everyone ;-)
* Keyboard, Joystick or Remote Controller, using a Lirc-compatible IR (InfraRed) receiver (check http://www.lirc.org/ to build yours), e.g. Miro PcTV's one or ATI Remote Wonder.

In fact, those little $100 laptops should be able to boot GeeXboX and play current gen DVDs... And easier things like MPEG4 (DivX, XviD, etc) need less. I have played 640x480 mid to somewhat high bitrate encodes smoothly on a Pentium 2 running at 233MHz (though I did overclock to 266MHz after initial tests for better results on some slightly higher bitrate things.) No, performance is not an issue.

To address number three, support is kind of both ways. First of all, most of these projects have bustling communities where users can help each other and on a few occasions the devs themselves will actually help (GeeXboX is a good example of one like this.) On the other hand, since support is 100% unofficial, a more unusual problem can result in few to no responses forgotten in the back pages of the forums with no solutions. Simpler problems often result in a tired canned response because they are sick of having to answer the same question over and over and aren't exactly being paid to do so. Some projects lack the huge communities and dev interaction and you end up with far more unanswered questions and unsolved problems. Also, if you want a new feature or whatever, the answer sometimes painfully enough ends up being told that if you want so-and-so, you should do it yourself. Since the person asking usually lacks the technical expertise to actually do this (hence the request thread rather than a "I've started adding so-and-so to the distro and need feedback" style thread.) Then again, some requests are admitedly ridiculous or against the goals of the project such as the people requesting X in GeeXboX, or, for an example of ridiculous, one person actually asked for a Gamecube

while the write speeds are still low compared to hard disks, and the access times would suck, it would be nice to be able to boot a disk on any computer, and be able to save all your work on that same disk. Beats having to work with only web based documents, or leaving small images on the local hard drive.

I can imagine a time when you could go to a net cafe (for example) and the pc you hired didn't have a hard disk at all, just a HD rewriter. You bring your own OS and leave no traces (incriminating or otherwise).

I guess this is possible now with DVD-RAM but the available space is a bit limited.

Another possibilty would be true use anywhere software. You wouldn't need to write for any particular market segment anymore, as you would provide the software and OS on the same bootable disk, great for corporate desktops or front of house applications.

I realise this idea will be shot down in flames for various reasons, but I still think it has merits. For example you could have MoviX or GeexBoX AND 40 or 50 movies all on the same disk.

My favorite example is GeeXboX which shows the perfect use for linux on old hardware. Turning that ancient Pentium II system into a HTPC. I personally ran it on a P2-233 and found I could watch a surprising amount of my MPEG4 files and even older backups like RealMedia (REALLY old...) DVD playback requires more power (or a Holywood+ card) but, still at least equal to, if not better, than the requirements of getting DVD playback running smoothly in Windows 98 (I got rid of the P2-233 for a SMP P3-500, so I now am above spec rather than below.) All this is thanks in no small part to the handy way you can cut out all the fat and keep only what you need even in the kernel itself (for example, no need for Amiga filesystem support on that HTPC.) The way linux handles hardware does help though. I have run a live windows disc before and if I ran it in certain hardware, it would demand a reboot to support that hardware and dump me into 640x480x4 safe mode until I did. Since it was a live disc, a reboot just rinses and repeats.

Overall, Windows has it's ups, but, it's downs are where linux comes in handy (and I wouldn't recommend running XP with less than 512MB if you want smooth gameplay or less than 256MB if you want smooth anything. GeeXboX should run smoothly on 128MB. Heck, it'd probably run smoothly on 64MB...)

On the subject of MythTV, I have been looking into setting up a PC Multimedia Center. Does anyone know a list of distros on this topic? Some distros I have found are:

http://www.geexbox.org/en/
http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
http://www.davedina.org/content/ (this looks promising, but is still in infancy stages)

Ideally, I am looking for a distro that I can set up in my living room, and, giving non-linux-savvy-guests a mouse/keyboard they can navigate their way to video games (ROMS), videos or TV.
I have browsed the distros above, but would like to know what else is out there before commiting countless hours configuring it.

I have been using GeeXboX , based on Linux and MPlayer, for a couple of years and it works well.
You can install it, but it's not necessary. So it's very easy to use.
From the website:
At the time of the first development releases (Dec. 2002), it was only capable of playing DivX movies, but now, nearly every kind of media file can be played with GeeXboX, with the OS supporting :
* MPEG 1/2 movies (MPG files, VCDs, DVDs ...)
* MPEG 4 movies (DivX, XviD, H.264 ...)
* RealMedia and Windows Media movies.
* OggMedia streams
* Matroska streams
* Audio streams like : MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV (AudioCD), AC3, MusePack (MPC), FLAC ...
* Network streams : WebRadio and WebTV
* Watching analog TV and digital DVB



So may be it isn't a "Home Media Center" but a standalone media player on steroids.

Because after all, we all know that before the WWW ad boom of 2000, there was no content on the web.
Oh wait - I think I have that backwards - there was *better* content on the web *before* the major corperations and their ads came on.

Myth TV and Tivo are all about aquiring media and playing it back later. But I already have aquired quite a bit, and it is sitting on my computer hard drive. Now, I just want to watch it on my TV from the couch. Tivo excells at recording shows off of TV. It is not good at playing my XVID files off my WIFI network. MythTV seems like maybe it could do what I want, but it's WAY overkill -- I'd want to put it on a computer with no DVD drive, no TV card, and with no Myth backend on my network, etc.

Try GeeXboX. It can be booted off CD or installed on a hard drive, automatically finds network shares with media files on them, among other features. It is Linux- and Mplayer-based, and is easily customized.

Geexbox does just what you want - a tiny (~6 MB iso image) linux distribution equipped with Mplayer: http://www.geexbox.org/.

if you dont want pvr and just want to play media check out geexbox at http://www.geexbox.org/, the download iso is tiny and it runs pretty well on older hardware, supports tv out and remotes etc.

Fanless Media Center Box
There isn't enthusiasts for a 3,389.61 USD Media Center Box.
May be a every-day-$500 PC with a not-so-usual case running GeexBox it's a better, cheaper solution.

- GeexBox Fan Club -

As several other people have mentioned just giving an empty operating system isn't going to turn your average family member on a great deal. I'd focus on the content and give them something compact like http://www.geexbox.org/en/screenshot.html (which already has a Christmasy theme built in!) and then preload it with a few video and audio tracks and a couple of photos. Stick that on a mini CDR with a big clear warning about not using in slot loading drives and you've got a funky little card/present which just happens to run on some weird OS called Linux. Then your crazy scheme might just succeed in not pissing anybody off!!! ;)

Yeah, I own a Elta 8883 that costed me ~120 (like $150) that plays almost every file I've ever encoded.

Well, actually it does not play (although it was promised, such of vaporware) OGG media files (neither vorbis sound nor OGG media container files).

I'm in doubt some hardware player (not PC based) could ever play OGM or MKV (you know, their flashable memories are not specially big even on more expensive players).

I played movies from PC for at least 4 years... I got tired of tweaking visuals to be readable on TV, and of the cables. And noise: the price to silence the Duron 700 machine I had for this is higher than buy a Elta 8883 machine. Last year I was using GeeXboX, a linux liveCD as small as 6 MB with the kernel, alsa, mplayer, network drivers, samba client, ftp server and client and a cute interface. Cool software.

You could use the GeeXboX Linux distribution. I haven't used it for a year but from what I remember it is a LiveCD. You boot up and can then access any network shares (including Windows) from your network. It will then play pretty much anything.

GeexBox is one cool tiny linux distro for creating bootable media discs using BusyBox

Let the box be busy

I have a pentium 2 400mhz laptop with a dead screen, keyboard, battery and the mouse is flakey. My main hard disk failed ages ago and I now have it sitting beside my TV running geexbox booting off a 100mb hard disk.
My powersupply died too, so I've soldered an old CB Radio supply into the laptop.

Could I watch movies on my computer? Yes, but I wouldn't have a nice couch to sit on and a large screen. I'm keeping that baby on life support for years to come.

Also this proves why you don't buy compaq crap.

I'm running GeeXBoX on an old laptop. It's a very nice distro. Eventually, I'll probably build my own mini-itx system.