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Build Your Own Linux Home Theater PC
Vic writes "If you have ever dreamed of building a home theatre PC, Extremetech has details on building a Linux-based system, and covers all the details of this epic journey. They did get the unit to run lots of features such as CDs, video, TV, weather, media libraries, guide viewing and show recording." From the article: "To paraphrase one forum quote seen during the research phase of this piece: 'Buy the beer first, this ain't gonna be easy.' But there is some good news here too. Getting a Linux-based HTPC has probably never been easier, though that is admittedly damning with faint praise. So here then is the tale of our ongoing adventure toward building a Linux-based HTPC."
i might actually have to pull my finger out and actually try this one, given the number of currently unused pc's sitting around this place
"but the beer first, this isn't going to easy"
Wait, I thought that when it came to the GPL and FOSS that beer was supposed to be free. Where'd I go wrong?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
all that and more...
at a fraction of the price.
I've been running media centre pc 2005 on our plasma screen for a while now... and although its good at tv, its complete rubbish when it comes to web interfaces, remote control and most of all the music library! It can take over 5 minutes to load, and there no option to organise on directories instead of media tags!
This is all well and good, but until someone manages to get an HDTV-ready HTPC, it's not worth it. Get a HD-ready PVR from your local cable/satellite company, combine with Xbox Media Center, and you're all set :)
Wasn't there an article about HTPCs a few weeks back (though it didn't specifically focus on Linux)?
gcc: no input sig
Doing so will mean that you're going to do nothing but violate the MPAA rules. You should only use MPAA-approved viewing devices that are keyed to your genome.
I find it interesting that very few of these articles attempt to cover HDTV or digital TV. There is more than one DTV card supported in Linux and an article containing this would prove much more valuable that just the "here's how to setup a box with a PVR-250/350" story that I seem to see everywhere.
:)
Where's the cutting edge stuff!?!
I ask because I have projects in the works that depends on working video capture drivers, and I'd like to be able to distribute (or distribute a pointer to) a list of supported video HW under 2.4 or 2.6. What lists I have managed to find seem out either wrong or somewhat out of date. Thanx -- m
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Just get a modded xbox. It's very easy to use and no headaches. I had it modded and the dude pre-loaded xbox media player. Plays pretty much anything. With the newer xbox 360 coming out, expect older xboxes to take a price dive around the holidays.
We've been down this PVR road many times here on /., and I don't know that this article's really adding anything that hasn't been said multiple times in other articles, but it's worth repeating that if you're going to build a Linux-based PVR system, do not plan being bale to use your ATI AIW card.
It just ain't going to cut it under Linux (blame about why this is goes back and forth, but the end result is that it just won't work). Instead, plan on investing in a Hauppage card. The 350 is a good place to start.
The first paragraph of the article states:
Linux is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the recent history of personal computing. In some ways, it's similar to the original homebrew PC movement of the late 1970s and early 80s. Equal parts cool kids club and grass roots revolution, Linux in its many different forms has proven itself a force to be reckoned with. A highly configurable OS that can both scale up to big enterprise iron and down to handheld devices, Linux can do almost anything. It even powers the most well-known PVR on the planet, TiVo.
I think there is something bigger here that merely Linux which is, after all, just a kernel of the OS. The kernel as well as the rest of the significant components are driven to development by the will of the community that finds interest in their own ends. They don't do this to win a popularity contest. They don't do it in order to bring anyone down. Mostly, they are doing it "because they want to." (And the only way to stop that is to take away their freedoms)
I think the project is cool and I will, one of these days, take it upon myself when I have the beer and other money to throw at it. But there is opportunity here for the entrepreneur!
The fact is, only a tiny portion of the public will do this for themselves... the rest of us will want to BUY it...
...just wait until you try finding something decent to watch.
Media Portal looks real good, its windows based but seriously mythTV just seems to be a little stagnant compared to the work being done in other PVR software programs.
Hate to sound like a troll...but, eh
The xbox360 is going to dominate the living room, sorry to say to all you pro-linux folks. With specs like this the Linux home system has some BIG shoes to fill.
"It's not rocket science, Smithers! It's only brain surgery!" --Mr. Burns
script to script to script to script.. all existing .. just they took the time to make it work.. one something god knows it it will work for anyone else out there.. atleast not all the stuff..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I am a happy Mythtv user.
/. add-on bracketry)
I watch TV much anymore, but I wanted to muck around with it, so I bought a WinPVR-250 card.
I stuck it in my file server, and watch it on my desktop. Both are running Debian, of course.
For debian/ubuntu users check out this line:
#Mythtv
deb http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu/~mdz/debian unstable mythtv
I am sure you know what it is for.. (minus the
The only tricky part was that the guide was off by one hour (found a quick-n-easy SQL one-liner on the internet to fix that) and setting up MySQL so that it would accept remote connections (this is disabled in Debian by default).
I found out that it will happily run in a window and is fairly desktop friendly, which I didn't know they had it setup to do. My desktop resolution is 2 monitors at 1280x1024 and I run mythtv at 800x600. Nice picture and a pleasent distraction while mucking around with work or whatnot.
Also nice for when you want to watch TV with your laptop.
If I had a second chance at a card (bought it a while ago) I'd get one of those plexor's that use the go7007 drivers.
Plexor GPL'd the drivers themselves and they look nice. Much more capable then the WinPVR stuff.. Can encode in mpeg4 (divx-style) as well as mpeg2 and others, were the WinPVR can only do mpeg2.
I may actually buy one still.
One tip: when you find a show you want to watch, hit the 'r' button to start recording it. I find that when I let it pause for a couple hours and I come back to finish watching the show to many times I accidently change the channel and loose my buffer.
What will Microsoft's reaction to this development be this time round? As a slashdotter and an upcoming pundit in the Computer Operating Systems' world, I am very interested. Is there an active community being built to improve this product? Hope so. Have a good weekend guys.
I started a project like this last fall, but abandoned it after i determined that it wouldn't pass the most important test of all. If my wife wouldn't be able to use it, it was worthless.
Not like she's a retarded spider monkey or anything - she's a graphic designer and uses OS X (left myself wide open for that one, i know) but if she's got to use three different remotes and a keyboard, there's no way in hell she's going to use the damn thing. I don't need her calling me at work to walk her through how to watch a DVD or listen to music.
Plus, if it's really easy and slick, then she'll be a lot more accepting of the equipment purchases that i tell her about.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
look for them here.
= 28&products_id=103
http://www.pchdtv.com/hd_3000_right_down.html
http://www.cyberestore.com/product_info.php?cPath
When are we going to see a Linux distribution specifically geared toward home theater PCs?
Sure, I probably should research this before posting, but if I did that, I wouldn't be a proper Slashdot reader, would I?
After fooling around with Linux and the VDR (HD recording software for TV) since 2000 and trying PCs for home theater, I quit all this. Too much hassle, 90% fiddling aroung and less than 10% real usage.
Now I got a MacMini here. Its small, quiet, comes with a good pre installed OS.
30$ for a remote control (BlueTooth -> SallingClicker)
and Im ready.
serves video, TV, audio, Internet (without virus probs) whatever.
Runs with or without a TV attached (use your mobile phone as a status display)
And most of all, it works ! Easy to configure and no maintenance required. Also uses much less power (25W, 40W max)
No real HD yet (only live via eyeTV from elGato and reduced resolution), but HD never worked flawlessly on my PC too.
This really was poor, a couple Linux N00b's try to get a HTPC together based on an almost automatic install of KnoppMyth and still can't do it due to lack of knowledge of Linux and fear of illegality to play DVD's.
/. for helping promote Linux by posting "news" articles written by total n00b's with no idea of what they are doing as this is even their admitted numerous attempt to do this.
Basically it is as simple as selecting the supported hardware, pop in the CD and go... these guys get tripped up tring to get a SUPPORTED remote to work and don't even know how to add two commands to the window manager so they don't have to go to the CLI to run Gedit!!! Morons.
This article did nothing, it didn't educate, it didn't enlighten, and it actually just spread more FUD about Windows MCE being better and easier. Thanks
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
It is easier to just buy a PhotoBridge (Linux-based) for about $300
http://rokulabs.com/products/photobridge
Then set up a PC in another room with a large disk drive and HDTV tuner card.
Details here:
http://frequal.com/pmn/TopComponents.html
Don't they know that the difference between "Wouldn't it be cool if..." and a Darwin award is a couple of six-packs.
Downloading movies (yes, I mean mainstream movies with restricted licenses, not the few that are free) would be one of the killer apps for a Linux HTPC, but it seems there is no way to do it, even if I am willing to pay.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
FINALLY...I have been waiting for something like this. I'm too cheap to buy all the things you used to need. But I have a bunch of computers I can use.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Is there not a viable business model (cost, profit, customer service) that takes the Tivo model to the next level by having a more general purpose computing device as a digital media center, without the outrageous "premium" that comes with MS's Media Center PC's. Can't a sub $1,000 linux based, HD, headless digital media centric PC be designed, marketed, and built so that it "Just Works?" Seriously, I'd like to buy one. just not for $2,000 There's no way I'm going to blow the type of time it would take to roll my own.
What I don't know I just fake...
For this reason, I had settled on a Windows XP install with a Hauppauge PVR-250 a while back on my old computer. The main problems I have had to date with it:
Admittedly, I need some new hardware. When I do get around to installing a faster motherboard, proc, and memory I am going to install Linux anyways. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the Linux solutions out there are still too much in their infancy to pass "the wife factor" right now. My wife can't use the current system because it's too sluggish and doesn't *just work* 100% of the time. (It doesn't work at all if I don't manually update the channel listings once a week which can take 20-30 minutes!)
My main point is: if you plan on building a Linux-based HTPC make sure that you have some pretty decent spare parts laying around, because if you don't it's probably just a lot more worth your time and money to go buy a top-of-the-line Tivo right now.
All you need is a Tivo Series2 with JavaHMO.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
We have some bright sparks that set their pvr to record, automatically upload and torrent the file, and the rest of us don't have to set up all the esosteric hardware. We just have to subscribe to an rss feed and watch whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want.
Right now, I'm running a via-1000 mb with Freevo, and no tuner card. Plug it right into the tv, set up NFS and SMB shares to my fileserver and just wach TV.
One of the things you have to look out for when building one of these with Linux is hardware compatibility. Go to the PVR Hardware Database to see what others are running.
Other interesting links:
HTPCNews
Build Your Own PVR
AVS Forum - they have a Linux section under HTPC.
Back up your claim :
p ?products_id=119
p ?articles_id=5
The product
http://www.upgrade123.com/catalog/product_info.ph
The chart comparing the two
http://www.upgrade123.com/catalog/article_info.ph
The hard parts of this project are mainly the packaging of all the software components, the identification of compatible (and tolerably performing) hardware, and configuration of each with the other. The more people who publish their successful paths/configs, and others who edit that research result into HW lists and .deb/RPM packages, the less beer we'll have to drink while struggling through it ourselves. And the more beer we'll have to drink while kicking back to watch the movies when it works. So try to drink only as much beer as lets you report your results.
--
make install -not war
no way will I have this done in time to record the Enterprise finale tonight.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
So they spent enormous amounts of time to build a HTPC, and what's in the list of things that don't work: CSS encrypted DVDs. Which is like every single one.
DRM is killing me. I'd love to run something non-Microsoft, but I personally do not want to sacrifice quality. I want to be able to play the highest quality that's available.
This means WMV9-HD @ 1080p for video and DVD-Audio for audio. (okay, I'm sure some of you will want to debate this, go ahead. Anyone that I show WMV9-HD to is simply blown away.)
One of the most unfortunate things is that you can not run WMV9-HD without using Microsoft binaries. In theory this is something that can be solved, because if I understand it correctly, WMV9 is standardized and it should be able to implement a decoder from the specs.
BUT, the standard most certainly does NOT cover the added DRM layer that a lot of WMV9-HD content has. And Microsoft has no intention to solve that problem. What we need is a DeCSS variant to remove the DRM from WMV9.
I'm unaware of any DVD-Audio playback capabilities under Linux, but again, this is certainly something that's technically possible. Except for, you guessed it, DRM. At the moment there's only one combination available if you want to play DVD-Audio discs that are 'encrypted'; SoundBlaster Audigy (not the lowest end one) and Windows.
For this one, I'm working on a solution (hardware based). The problematic thing is that the encryption scheme allows for key revokation. I think this is specifically designed as a counter act to the Xing key discovery. If they find that we discover the SoundBlaster key (or maybe find some other way to use the SoundBlaster to get the unencrypted data), then they can revoke it, making new content unplayable on the SoundBlaster. This may sound as very hard to believe (it does to me), and I may be wrong. But I don't see how else it would work.
My mom washed my Linux Home Theatre PC, and it BLEW UP!
OK, I'm done (but for how long?)
put the what in the where?
Check out byopvr.com yall. Tis a great site on building your own PVR with a good community to help you in selecting hardware, software, and getting it all working together. Check em out, I think you'll find the folks there are great and awesome info as well.
Now, HTPCs are the next big thing. Unfortunately, brewing your own is still a pain in the butt. What needs to be done to remedy this is the following:
I know those are not easy, and it's hard to support every combination of hardware out there. But the efforts so far are so fragmented. There is room for improvement.
If anyone is interested in a much better guide (under Fedora):
Jarod Wilson's Fedora Myth(TV)ology
He does a nice job of keeping this guide up to date and complete. Some people may not like the RPM he uses (Axel Thimm custom packages) but they've worked nicely for me.
Terry
But then, my mom washed it, and it exploded.
Signature.
An ASP web page explaining how to have a Microsoft free home...
Look at this article... http://mikz.hopto.org/mikz.php
For $250 (for new customers) I got a DishNetwork DVR with 250GB hard drive, 2 HD satellite and 1 off-air HD tuners, two-room viewing, HDMI/DVI,etc.
There are only several off-air HD tv channels in my area so I can't justify spending $1000 on a home-grown box that won't pick up any satellite channels.
If you have $$$, get one of these and start hacking.
I would love to be able to add an extra 250GB hd and make use of the USB ports (not being used for anything now)
> Getting a Linux-based HTPC has probably never been easier, though that is
> admittedly damning with faint praise.
It's not damning with anything if you're just saying "Getting a Linux-based HTPC has probably never been easier"!
You talk spec , its cool , but how much for it ?
what bundle ?
What would you pay for a dedicated backend/frontend system?
Would you be willing to buy a backend/frontend combo, and then buy additional frontend systems for additional rooms?
I'm looking for feed back, as I am working with a small group of people to develop exactly this.
I'm interested in your feedback.
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
So use MPlayer under linux. I am yet to experience what the big DVD-not-working-under-linux hoopla is about.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Unlike the previous XBox, this isn't just a PC in a box. Run Linux on a custom triple-core PowerPC chip with a custom ATI graphics chipset? "Hours after release" might be expecting a little much.
Breakfast served all day!
From my own experience, a remote control is probably a lot cheaper than the $30 portraied there. You can get some standard IR-decoder components out there, and hook those up to the serial port. It will take you 1 universal remote, 1 ir decoder (vishay) and a few extra components to get it to work. But that's explained pretty well on the Lirc-page.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I've been wanting to know this for some time...
Do any of these software products have a way of dealing with a DirecTV tuner? I know there's no tuner card per se, but what about using an IR eye, and acting as a remote control to change channels at set times...is this possible using Myth or Freevo?
What about listings? I have OTA HD already, and I also have HD DirecTV channels. Would be nice to just output DVI or Component to the machine, and let the machine do the heavy lifting.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
It's not a media center, it's just a computer with some added software to try and simplify things. The problem is that in many cases the simplification leads to an interface that is foreign to the user. It's somewhere halfway between a VCR or DVD player menu system and a GUI. Not good.
/dev/video > /mnt/video1/Pause.mpg' process running in the background. After a slight delay, Xine just starts playing the Pause.mpg file as it's being recorded. I can pause the program at any time and pick up where I left of or go back. When I exit Xine, I'm even asked if I want to rename Pause.mpg to save it for later. And ALL of the playback functions whether it's from the capture card, MPG, AVI or WMV files or a DVD can be stopped using the kb shortcuts. "Q" always gets you out of trouble by quitting Xine no matter what. Music playback and Photos are all handled by the software that comes with Fedora.
Considering how many people these days are VERY familiar with the W.I.M.P. (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) paradigm, there is no need to disguise what these boxes really are unless you are trying to create a very limited use appliance like a Tivo or iPod.
With that in mind, my home theater PC is just a Celeron (P4 family) running Fedora Core 3, Xine (which does nearly everything) and a Hauppaugue PVR250 card (which is perfect for this sort of thing). I wrote some scripts and created some icons to match and my wife finds this WAYYYY easier than the VCR menus system, the Windows ME based system we had before and you know why? She looked at it and said, "Oh, it works like a computer. This is easy'. I've been running like this since about February. It's perfect. Click on one icon and the system becomes a "TV". Hit "Q" (thanks to Xine's extensive kb shortcuts) and you're back to the desktop. Watch a DVD? Just pop it in the drive and Fedora's MagicDev application will launch my "playdvd" script which automatically starts a fullscreen Xine session and starts playing the DVD with full menu navigation support, etc...
Schedule a recording? Just click the scheduler icon and thanks to the magic of Gnome 2.x's Zenity add on, I have a series of nice GUI based dialog boxes that allow me to select the date and time of the recording as well as program name and recording length. It sticks all the info in cron and the show is scheduled. Pause live TV? Just click the "pausetv" icon on the button dock and Xine launches while I have a 'cat
My wife loves the new system since she feels it's the easiest I've ever set up. The real key is to put down the pretenses that this box is anything more than a computer. For my next trick, I'll be completely eliminating any TV or stereo gear from this setup. The TV gets replaced by a much higher quality display LCD computer monitor. The Yamaha 5.1 amp is getting replaced with an amp of my own design that will just be an amp leaving all the preamp features to Gnome's Mixer applet. Can't get any easier than that...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
My problem wasn't so much getting the basic system to work, though getting the pcHDTV card working was a bit frustrating simply because a weak signal can cause the tv player software to crash...but getting seemingly simple stuff set up right has been a challenge. I have myth running under Debian on a 3Ghz P4 w a pcHDTV card. That part works fairly well, though I don't have many HD signals to choose from yet in my market. On the other hand... when I play a DVD with xine it uses my full 5.1 speaker setup and sounds great. When I play or rip DVDs through myth, it uses only the front channels. As often as not it will take play foreign language audio tracks no matter what I tell it to play. So now the simple job of ripping a DVD to the hard drive becomes trial and error and provides inferior results. I'm sure there is a simple fix for that, but I haven't found it.
- Store music, movies, TV, photos? Check.
- Play back all these media seamlessly? Sort of. For some reason MCE treats music and video differently, which is strange since Windows Media Player does not. For example, you can create playlists and shuffle music; you can't do the same with video.
- Support a wide variety of codecs? Sure. Of course it doesn't support XVid or OGG Vorbis out of the box, but install the right DirectShow filters and away you go.
- DVD Movies? Check.
- Support DRM? You know it. Actively promote DRM is more like it.
- Serve to other client machines? You need to buy a Media Center Extender appliance, but yes. However, the extenders don't support all content formats.
- Simple GUI? Functions range from simple to almost aggravatingly childlike.
- Rock solid and stable? Believe it or not, I have seen very few blue screens on XP. If you have, you've got dodgy hardware.
- Go in and out of sleep states with no difficulty? I doubt you guys even comprehend this one. Mac OS X has a nice sleep function, but my MCE machine is pretty damn cool. You can hit a button on the remote and it will go into standby. The hard drives will spin down, the CPU goes into low-power mode, everything. But suppose you have programs queued up to record? No problem -- the machine will actually switch itself back on half way when it's time to grab those programs. The monitor doesn't even turn on. It just spins up the drive and starts capturing the TV program, then goes back into full Standby mode when it's done. Very slick.
- Run quiet? It's not silent, but the words "whisper-quiet" definitely come to mind. Most of what you hear is the hard drives. The noise is completely negated by TV at even a moderate volume.
- Can handle HD formats? MCE 2005 already supports current HD standards. You really think Microsoft won't be in on the party when new ones come along?
Say what you will about Microsoft, but their track record for this stuff is pretty all right. My main gripe is that it doesn't support simultaneous "computing" and "TV watching" functions as well as maybe it could. It works, but there are aspects of "dual-mode" operation that are a little clunky. I need to use this thing as a PC -- I can't afford a $1,550 set-top box.P.S. The machine I bought is a Sony VAIO RA830G desktop.
Breakfast served all day!
My Mythtv experience pretty well matched theirs and I bought hardware that was "guaranteed to work". It will NOT work with old junk hardware.
You need a fast machine to get useful performance.
KnoppMyth didn't work.
I got it to work under Gentoo.
I got the OS up using Gentoo's docs.
The gentoo ebuilds don't work. Some don't
compile and a couple have incompatible versions.
The mythtv folks will not provide any support,
write fragile code, and refused to make even
minimal changes to the readme that might make
a user's experience better.
Make sure you do NOT get the latest QT lib.
There's a bug in the latest version, or a
bug the code relied upon in the previous version
that isn't there now. You'll end up being an
hour off during daylight savings time.
You should use the virtual partition system
because you'll want to have partition that
span physical drives.
Mine still doesn't play dvds, the web server
php still errors out when trying to access
it from the network, some of the
remote control keys don't work, and it crashes
if you attempt to play a second recorded shows.
It occasionally crashes the X server when trying
to record and play at the same time.
I'm investigating rewriting the front end
to use framebuffer instead of X/mythfrontend.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
DVD playback is a thorny issue, mostly because of the legalities revolving around DeCSS ...
I thought this was all settled? There is no DMCA violation because it is used to for interoperability. What other legal issues are there?
If there is no legal issue, then extremetech is just perpetuating the myth that OSS programs have all sorts of legal issues. yes I know, gif encoding, mp3 decoding aside DeCSS was one of the cases where this was not an issue.
Anybody care to share their insight?
The page title:
.asp
Microsoft-Free Home Part 4: The Linux HTPC--ExtremeTech Build It
The page URL:
www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1814924,00
It's not the program so much as the CSS libs... which are really not all that hard to find nowadays. As a media player I like Mplayer, but as a DVD player I'd probably recommmend Xine
Sounds like one of the few legitimate use cases for a specialized distro left. $DEITY knows we have enough of them already, but a dedicated HTPC distro that Did Not Suck® would be interesting.
I know last year I could buy an enlight atx desktop for about $50 or so. I complained that was a touch spendy for a beige in contrast to all the midtowers priced at $20 or so. But now the phrase "home theater PC" has been coined... the old style desktop case is now a "media center". Now you're lucky to find the desktop style for under $65.
But all is not lost. The old Gateway Destination PCs are starting to hit the used market for under $75 or so. The last one I looked at could take a standard 6 slot ATX board so long as you pulled out the two bubbles the slot one retention bracket screwed into. While the original product was so underpowered it couldn't do what it was advertised to do, I have to admit the case was nice and fit in a normal stereo stack.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I have the same problems with mplayer (front chanels only, non-english default language, and getting subtitles to work) After spending 300 years studing the mplayer manual, I got it to store half decent subtitles, but didn't bother with the anti-aliasing.
In case you're wondering, this is the command I used for play back:
mplayer -loadidx index -vo dga -x 800 -y 600 video.avi -vobsub subtitles -vobsubid 0 -slang en
sorry I've lost the one I used to rip the sub titles in the first place.
I haven't started on suround sound, that'll take a little longer...
ps. having read over what I just wrote, I conclude that mplayer has a deeply, deeply, *crap* user interface, yet that strangly makes it attractive...
Sure, as long as it's cheap and user friendly, or at least not user hostile. It should be priced so that your volume discount in components should offset the labor to do the system integration/assembly work so that from my stand-point I can buy a system like this for same cost (minus my time) to build it myself. Once I own it, and it works, then I can worry 'bout modify it.
What I don't know I just fake...
.. Always a good place to get information on Linux Home Theater PC's too..
c /
http://www.linuxis.us/linux/media/howto/linux-htp
I tried this over the course of a few months... Lack of drivers for tv cards, lack of documentation, difficult to compile & install apps - Linux is a pain in the ass for HTPC.
Buy Windows + Htpc software and save yourself the hassle.
I built my own HTPC using a gutted out DVD player as the case. My recommendation to anyone doing this would be to get a DVB card (either DVB-S if you have Satellite, DVB-C if you have cable, or DVB-T for terrestrial broadcasts.) This way you can get the MPEG stream straight into your PC and onto your HDD - no horrible analog capturing and MPEG encoding to mess with! For those with a graphics card or MB with digital video output, you can cut the analog side of things all together.
There's another option on the software side of things if you go this way too, take a look at VDR (http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/). There are no shortage of plugins, including support for using a remote copy of xine as an output device.
More info on Digital TV under linux is available at http://www.linuxtv.org/
Now I can record my HD shows that I tend to miss when real life gets in the way! W00t!
Oh wait. No I can't. Not unless I am sitting right there to change the channel on the cable box.
I guess I'll have to go the easy route and just pay the 5 bucks to comcast every month to have the ability to cue up those pay channels.
Bummer
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
I've been tweaking and updating my MythTV box for over 8 months now. Usually a tweak here, a tweak there. Would I call the process painfull? No, but then I like hobbie projects. I've played with just about everything under the sun (Windows MCE via MSDN, SageTV, MediaPortal, MythTV, Freevo etc), and Myth was by far my favourite.
I work from home, and simply don't watch TV without it. DVD Playback is perfect (Props to Xine) with Dolby Digital Sound, DVD Imports are perfect with Dolby Digital Sound. Do you need a keyboard or mouse? NO! (USB UIRT is pretty good). Heck, I even get HDTV with Dolby Digital Sound using the PCHD3000. There are plenty of sites out there with details on setup.
For those of you risking it PLEASE consider Gentoo - its a little more painful for setup (no GUI install), but WORKS. Knopmyth is a nitemare, Debian Sarge is worse, Fedora is out of date half the time. Take the plunge.
slashdot: news for people who can't use google.
An actual program dedicated for DVD's, instead of a random multi-media player that happens to play DVD's....
is there something similar to power strip in the alternate-os world? i would LOVE to convert ONE more box to the right side of the force.
I plan to build a MythTV box soon, with an HD-3000, and possibly an Air2PC card as well. Anyway, I don't plan on upgrading my TV/display for a while after that; I will connect to my SDTV via S-Video for the time being.
Can an HDTV stream be displayed on an SDTV from a myth box via S-Video? Obviously it wouldn't be at HD resolutions, but am I correct in figuring that the quality would approximate that of a DVD player output to SDTV via S-Video (which looks quite a bit better than analog cable)? Has anyone done this? Any other special hardware requirements (aside from S-Video out, which is obvious)? Scaling or conversion (digital-->analog) issues?
I have been following this for awhile and waiting for Myth and Linux to be ready for primetime! I think it's really close to satisfying all of the features you listed with the new 18.1 release and the Tribune data thing (www.2CPU.com). I need to bite the bullet and build one now and see how it handles HDTV through the vidcard and compression engines. If that is a solid then this thing is about to stomp all over Windows MCE!!!!
Where are the JetCars and Teflon Suits I was promised??