Linux Media Jukebox on the Cheap

tsetem writes "Over on ExtremeTech, they have a write-up on building your own Linux Media Jukebox for a little over $500 and a bit of elbow-grease. This is probably the PC we were hoping that the Lindows Media PC would've been." This particular project uses Freevo which has matured significantly since I last looked at it.

Comments

Or even less thanks to Microsoft...

[iainl]

I've been labouring under the impression that one of the reasons why chipping XBoxes (list price £129 as of last Friday) with a mod chip (~£50) or even less thanks to yesterday's /. story is so great is because they do an excellent job as media jukeboxes themselves.

The only part missing is that they don't have the inputs to record your own stuff, unlike these tv-tuner equipped boxes. If you just want to use playback (either from the internal drive or over the local network) then a chipped XBox is much cheaper.

Cases

[minaguib]

I've been researching this myself for a while and one of the problems I faces was actually finding a case that resembles a VCR in dimensions rather than the traditional TOWER-pc. Here are a few links to interesting cases/systems that you might find interesting:

http://www.littlepc.com/
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/slim_pc/slm /pro_slm_detail.php?UID=335&MODEL=MS-6243
http://www.partshelf.com/giggmaxmodgb.html
http://www.storever.com/
http://www.linux-works.com/browser/html/our_produc ts.html
http://www.evalue-tech.com/evalueweb/products/spec ifications/model.cfm?mn=EEC-5000

For the ones that come with a mobo/any hardware I cannot vouch for how well they work under linux (or windows for that matter).. These are just bookmarks from some initial research I did.

A swing and a miss

[stratjakt]

This is all fine and good. A guy built a PC and put linux on it and hooked it up to his TV. It's no great feat, but it's linux so it's on slashdot.

Anyways, here's what's missing or could have been improved..

TV Tuner Card Hauppauge WinTV PCI $60

Does the Hauppage WinPVR card not work? This costs only a few more beans, but provides vastly superior captures and onboard MPEG2 compression, IIRC.

Keyboard Silitek SK-7551 $20

A keyboard and mouse? This is the main stumbling block. A true MediaPC needs to be controlled through a simple interface with a remote control.

Also, stick an LCD display on the front with a few buttons so it can be used without the remote.

Of course that requires a bunch of coding work to make sure everything fits together seamlessly, and there's no trace of being a "PC" left in there.

The new Radeon AIW Pro cards fit the bill for both video capture, playback, remote capabilities, and firewire transfer. Of course, they cost as much as this whole project.

(In a nutshell I just spelled out the Media PC I'm working on putting together)

In the end, this guy built a PC and installed Red Hat on it. Whoopty do. He can call it a MediaPC, he can call it a Star Trek supercomputer. It's still just a midrange PC with Red Hat installed.

Re:Freevo, MythTV

[Silwenae]

I would disagree that Snapstream is a fair comparison to MythTV, especially when you include the weather, music and game modules available, though setup is the biggest differentiator.

In addition, with MythTV having the ability to do frontend and backend - record on one box and play on another, so you can have the noisy machine in a closet somewhere and the quiet one by the TV, is one of the best things Myth has going for it.

That, and it has an extremely active community on the mailing list.