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How Do You Handle Home Media?
carpoolio writes "Yahoo's Tech Tuesday has an interesting series on bridging the PC/home entertainment gap. The solutions are fairly complicated, and very Windows-centric. As I store more media on my PowerBook, I'm finding more ways I can't listen to or view it on my stereo and TV. One example: TiVo Desktop won't stream AAC files - only MP3s - from iTunes to TiVo. That's an easy fix, but still: how do you get stuff off of your computer and onto your TV, stereo, etc.?"
This is a response to your question about 'How Do You Handle Home Media?'.
In reading the question, you have actually answered the solution yourself. As you point at problems simply eliminate that area. You pointed to Tivo not streaming then eliminate that component from the problem.
There is nothing preventing you from hooking the computer to a stereo tuner solving the issue or hooking a composite video card to a TV (better would be a DVI input directly to a flat panel). If the component doesn't suite your needs then that component is not part of the solution. That goes for the Windows Centric issue you addressed; if it doesn't solve the need than there are non-proprietary solutions, I think the name start with L or something someone.
Really, Tivo and other you named are fighting a battle that may be hard won. The proprietary market seems to have slowed in response, yet the onslaught of FOSS solutions hasn't eroded over the years. The FOSS solutions seem to now fit needs faster than their proprietary relatives. Now if the true lower level hardware could be non-proprietary so you could order a manufacture to assemble components you designed in a collective community. Don't like Intel great IBM has some neat PowerPC chips don't like the video card drivers great we'll build it to your specs - this is a dream not achievable just yet.
I would like to not only second the recommendation for MythTV, but also say that for this Linuz newbie, the experience of installing and using MythTV was fantastic. The community is extremely helpful, the Wikis are updated with the most important stuff and the latest version installed without any hitches. My wife can't believe it's free. I can't believe it was so easy.
Enough gushing.