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

Freevo, MythTV

[Mysticalfruit]

I like Freevo, but MythTV actually have live TV pause features and lots of addons...

http://www.mythtv.org

Re:Freevo, MythTV

[AKnightCowboy]

The problem I had with Freevo is I could never get the XMLtv stuff to work right without tons of fscking around. Maybe I was just doing it wrong, but it seemed like you had to enter all the channels you want it to pick up into the config file. Seems like too much work. :-) With MythTV on the other hand I grabbed a handful of Debian packages with apt-get, configured the mysql setup via the dialog prompts and had a PVR up and running on a prototype server in no time at all.

Now all I need is the $1500-$2000 to build this project ($1000-$1500 for a backend server with between 500 and 800 gigs of space, $500 for a nice quiet living room system). Maybe I'm way too into this "free software" stuff. I could just buy a ReplayTV if they don't go out of business for much cheaper, but I'd have less functionality. Hmph. My goals are at least 500 hours of recording time, two tuners, enough horsepower to do DivX encoding from two tuners at once, and a nice quiet set top box for TV output in my living room.

Re:Freevo, MythTV

[starvo]

Yea, and unless you're running Mandrake 9.0 or 9.1, it ends up being a bizarre ritual that takes into the 3rd level of hell when you try to get everything working.

MythTV has more features, and it works slightly better, BUT.. It's a pain to config and setup, and don't even get me started on the hell of making LIRC work with MythTV, on Redhat.

Freevo is nice only because it puts everything together, in a slightly simpler package than MythTv. But it lacks features.. Hrm.

Recently my roommate and I each built PVR boxes, and in the end, I heard a lot less swearing, and cussing from him, because he went with a Windows (XP) solution. He's using the Snapstream 3.0 Beta.. Pretty much does everything that Freevo/Myth does.. except you don't go insane when installing it. But yeah, if you can't get beyond having to run windows, then try MythTv or Freevo.

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.

Re:Freevo, MythTV

[PhysicsExpert]

Has anyone tried running MythTv on one of the VIA Eden boards? I'm really tempted to build a media box but all the solutions I've seen so far are either too ugly/too noisy/too expensive. If the processor on one of these boards can cope with the video stuff then they would solve these problems at a stroke. As a side issue do you know how the MythTv people are coming along with hardware encoding? The news on the site is a little confusing on that one.

Re:Freevo, MythTV

[leighklotz]

I dunno, the perl intaller for XMLTV just did that all for me by itself.

Freevo, on the other hand, is a moving target with tons of documentation about how to solve obscure past problems for people deeply involved. Despite there runs at it with a WinTV card, a DVD drive, a Packard-Bell remote, and a Matrix G400 (at one time the recommended configuration), I've not been able to get it working. Once or twice I tried installing from RPMs hoping that would set more defaults up, but it failed in obvious ways. When I noted this to the list, I got back a polite "Please don't report bugs when installing the RPMs; use the .tar.gz file." Next time when I tried the .tar.gz file and provided a bug fix, I got back "Please use the CVS tree." Conclusion: Freevo is not for ready for me to try. And yes, I looked at it this week.

here's another one ;D

[Brian Boitano]

made by a friend of mine ;)

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.

Small but more than just an MP3 player

[robslimo]

I'd like a media play that is a nice compromise between portable and full-featured.

Features:

1) tablet form with about a10" screen with a foldable or removable stand
2) support solid state media (smart cards, etc) along with a replaceable/ugradable hard drive for (somewhat limited) data storage.
3) WiFi capability (to network to a media server in your home) and wired network capability.
4) runs from battery or wall wart
5) robust. don't want to break the display the first time I accidentally knock it off my desk.
6) affordable!

So, any entrepeneurs out there with a load of ready to design and tool up to build this thing for me?

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.

But how quiet is it?

[elwinc]

Sounds interesting, but how quietly does it run? The article never mentions noise/quiet. The case comes with 2 6cm fans; are they needed? The PSU is a 200W microATX that comes with the case; is it quiet? The AthlonXP 1.47GHz runs pretty hot; what kind of CPU cooler does it need, and how quiet is that? A noisy media PC is not much fun...

What I want from a media PC

[WIAKywbfatw]

1. Small form factor, similar to VCR/DVD player.

Hey, it's a media PC. I want to put it in the front room with my TV.

2. Near silent operation.

See above. No use being in my front room if it sounds like a jet engine.

3. Ability to play, rip and stream (to other PCs) a variety of music file formats now and effortlessly accept more codecs in the future.

Right now my collection is in MP3 format. When I have time, I will probably rip to Ogg from scratch. In two years time, who knows what new super-duper format will be king?

4. Ability to play DVDs (of all regions) effortlessly.

Region encoding is ridiculous. If I bought it then I want to be able to play it. It shouldn't matter if I live in London, New York or Tokyo. 'Nuff said.

5. Ability to watch and record TV, PVR-style.

Hey, it's not that difficult.

6. Ability to do more than one of the above at once.

If I want to stream music to elsewhere in the house, I still want to be able to watch a DVD without it skipping frames. It's not that much to ask.

7. Ability to burn CD-RWs and/or DVDs

It would be really nice if this DVD+/DVD- format war would just resolve itself. Multi-format players, like the ones from Sony, are nice but we shouldn't have to pay a premium just to avoid the risk of buying a turkey.

8. Automatic update option.

Some people like to have complete control of their box but the mass market demands simplicity. The Average Joe doesn't want something he's going to have to tinker with every two weeks. Let the AJs have their automatic updates and let the power users do what they want too.

I'm sure I've left something off this list but these are the bare minimums that I'd look for in my ideal media PC.

Noise / fanless epia

[slim]

My first reaction to the article was that it doesn't consider noise, and my ideal Freevo box would have to be whisper quiet, if not silent.

I've investigated the mini-itx boards, and it appears that they might have just enough oomph to play back video, maybe to encode video with low compression, but not do both at the same time.

Some of the mini-itx boards have onboard hardware MPEG decoders, which would help a lot, but I'm fairly sure there is no Linux support for these, and I know Freevo doesn't support any hardware MPEG decoders yet.

One day, one day.

Adding an PCI MPEG encoder/decoder uses up your one PCI slot...

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.

Freevo vs. MythTV

[staini]

MythTV really is better when it comes to features around TV. However Freevo plays any format that MPlayer does. It works on any Video-Out that SDL works on (fbdev, dxr3, x11, ...) and has some nice addons, too. GPhoto2 integration, imdb a web recording interface just to name a few.
From my experience it is much easier to make it look the way you like it and to make it do what you like...

Re:Freevo vs. MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

MythTV plays any format that mplayer does to via the MythVideo module. FYI.

I've actually been looking at another option

[tweek]

Instead of spending money on an uber-silent case and mobo (allthough a mini-itx would do the job), I'm considering this.

I figure I can hook this bad boy up to my powerhouse machine and just send it all wireless.

The only thing I'm concerned about is sound quality. I've already got a dvd player so I don't need that functionality. I just want a way to play my divx files and ogg/mp3s on the main system.

I've done some testing, converting divx to vcd but I always end up with unsynched sound. I also figure that keeping things in divx would be much better than spending the time converting them to vcd and having to change disks halfway through.

Dreambox?

[frozenray]

The DreamBox DM7000 looks promising to me. What I'd like to have is a network ogg and mp3 player, and the DM7000 seems to have all the features I want, with hardware MPEG2/PVR functions thrown in to boot (and MPEG4 apparently on the way). It runs Linux, so retrofitting Vorbis and MP3 compatibility should be no big deal. Retail price is about $500 in my area, but I'm sure I can find a better deal on the 'net. More accessories (wireless keyboard) and pictures here.

Anybody have experiences with this one?

German c't magazine ran a cool (but pricey) DIY media center project in 2001, see this post of mine. They had plans to convert it to Linux, but it's outside my price range, mainly due to the large LCD screen.

Re:Curious: Anyone running this on a fanless Epia?

[stratjakt]

I played with one of the 800mhz boards, wanting small form factor PCs to build for my kids with at least enough juice to play some light games and stream DVDs and DivX off of my network.

DVDs played, but were skippy and annoying. High-quality DivX was even worse.

It has so much trouble playing back these streams, I cant imagine the struggles it would have trying to encode them in real time (with a capture card in its free PCI slot).

All in all, I thought it would be neat for a little kiosk-type workstation or something, but didnt cut it as an entertainment device. So back it went.

There are newer, faster, better models. But, I ended up going for Shuttle's FV25 flex-atx boards with Celeron 1.0a's (tualitin core, 256k cache). It's almost as small, has everything onboard (just add 40$ celery CPU and ram), and was much more powerful.

It has onboard S4 savage video with shared ram (it aint high end by any means, but is more capable than people give it credit for - my kids play Dragons Lair 3D and other recent titles on it all the time). DVD/DivX/MP3/etc playback is A1.

It's not fanless, of course, but the way they mounted in the cases I used (refurbed and repainted "Barbie PC" flex atx cases), air is drawn in the bottom, over a fanless CPU/sink (I had to hunt for a sink that was not too big, the intel stock sink wouldnt fit) and straight out the back, so one 80mm fan pinned down to 7 volts keeps the board nice and cool, and you cant hear it.

Shuttle also has FlexATX boards for P4 and Athlon, if you wanted some real power for gaming. You find 'em primarily in their spacewalker barebones kits, but you can buy them seperately if you look around online.

myHTPC

[SheepHead]

If you're running Windows try myHTPC. It already does, can do, or will do nearly anything you want.

Play videos, MP3s, view the weather, XMLtv guide information, launch emulators like MAME and any others (see the forum for myGames), view visualization plugins with Winamp or Windows Media Player 9, launch executables, write your own plugins... view your MP3s by cover art, your games by screen shot, control it with a remote or a gamepad... (find a joy2key program in the forums to use a gamepad for now.)

Really, just check out the screen shots on the homepage. It's only been around for a few months and new releases come fast and furious thanks to Pablo's hard work. It is basically "like XP Media Center Edition, but better, and free." (as in beer, for now.)

sheephead