Linux Based Media Boxes?

Matt Dugan returns an old question to the forefront: "I am building a Linux-based 'media box', which will sit alongside the TV, Stereo, VCR, etc.. My goals are to play DVD's, MP3s/Oggs, CD's, VCD's, and the occasional Divx AVI. Though DVD support isn't perfect, I expect it to be well on it's way by the time I get everything set up and running the way I want, but my problem lies here: I want to be able to do 'real-time' video capture to an IBM Desktar 60GXP 30GB drive via a Pinnacle DC10+ MJPEG PCI card. Has anyone else successfully configured such a beast?"

"Here are the system specs:

• Socket 7 MB with onboard Video/Audio, ATA-66/33 IDE
• AMD K6-III/400MHz processor
• 128MB PC100
• Fujitsu 6.4GB primary HD
• IBM Deskstar 60GXP 30.7GB secondary (in removeable 5.25" caddy)
• Pioneer 10x/40x DVD-ROM
• Generic 24x CD-ROM
• Pinnacle DC10+ Video Capture Card
• RealTek 10/100 NIC

I would prefer to run Vector Linux, for the smaller footprint (gives me more space for Music on my primary HD) but I am open to suggestions. Also, what video cards give the highest quality TV-out under Linux?"

Comments

Media box

[ikekrull]

I have an Iomega Buz card that works great for capturing MJPEG video under linux. Low-to-No CPU usage, full-screen, full-frame PAL.

I would normally lean towards using half-frame (352x288 PAL) capturing as it consumes less disk space (1-2MB/s) than the 2-5MB/s of 720x576.

My soundcard, however, can't do mmapped recording and is no good for synched audio capturing. This screws me royally till i get round to putting a new soundcard in the machine.

I have had a BT848 TV Tuner card in the same machine, and that worked great for fullscreen TV playback at 800x600, also with low to no CPU usage.

My original foray into this field was with the BT848 in a P-200 box. I used it as a TV, an MP3 jukebox and an internet terminal displaying on my TV.

This was connected to the TV via an external scan converter, and let me watch TV in a window, while i surfed the net/played MP3s etc.

Remote control was taken care of by a home-built IR adapter and LIRC, and later an analog IR 'joypad' which came with the scan converter. and worked as a serial mouse.

Fonts and stuff needed major tweaking, and the general usability of a standard X desktop on a TV is bad.

With regard to the DC10/Buz:

I am not sure whether it is possible to capture MJPEG to a file, and play it back at the same time. Theoretically, since the bytes are on the disk, this should be easy, but you never know.

MJPEG will also consume vast amounts of disk space. realtime transcoding to MPEG or even DivX would be nice - piping the MJPEG through an encoder instead of writing to disk, but the encoders i have used aren't fast enough (though my machine is slowish - a dual P.Pro 200 that lacks MMX), but may be an option with good hardware.

An MJPEG-based PVR would be the best first step to take, but be aware that MJPEG consumes at least twice as much space as MPEG, so budget for big disks. However quality should be really good.

The stability of lavtools (MJPEG capture/playback utils) has been good for me so far, but i haven't used them in a PVR-like capacity - i.e heavy use with a failure in capturing being somewhat unnacceptable.

When i get a new soundcard for my box, i will be looking at doing this again, perhaps what we need is a sourceforge project or similar 'hub' for MJPEG-based PVR projects.