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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."
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!
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.
No, but some of that is a hardware requirement.
Everytime a story like this comes out, the MythTV faithful sprout up, but it's hard not and a list of requirements like that shows why:
MythTv already does:
# Store music, home movies, recorded TV shows, digital photos
# Play back all these media seamlessly
# Support a wide variety of audio and video codecs
# Play back DVD movies, and look as good as or better than a DVD player
# Have a simple GUI that any family member can use
# Serve this media up to other client machines on the home network
# Be able to handle HD music and movie formats, both present and future, with minimal upgrades (okay, maybe we're reaching a bit on this one)
This one is hardware dependent for any OS:
# Run quietly enough so that its fan noise doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of the content it's serving up
I have no experience with this one:
# Go in and out of sleep states with no difficulty
Which only leaves these two:
# Be rock-solid stable 24/7
Frankly speaking, MythTV isn't TiVO, and your mileage may vary. My current uptime is 18 days on my mythtv box. For my wife, a MythTV crash (frontend or backend, she can't tell) results in a computer reboot to bring it back up for her because she's willing to hit the power button but not willing to learn to restart it.
# Support the playback of DRM-encoded purchased/rented movies and music
For any copy protection there is a way to beat it, but what you need is specific to the system. For things like DVDs and Apple's Fairplay the solutions are known and common. For things like downloaded movie rentals, I don't know of any cracks for them, so this could conceivably be an issue.
Never confuse volume with power.
I have mod points, but I'll respond since I have a HDTV HTPC setup. It's pretty simple actually... it runs Meedio and uses the ATI dongle to output to my TV. I have a HDTV OTA capture card that I schedule programs in. Meedio imports recorded shows and I can watch them whenever I want.
I don't, however, have the capability to do time-shifting. That's something I'll get once Meedio is done with their MeedioTV product. Also, I'll be looking into the cable card thing at some point, since I'd prefer to record from my cable service.
The whole thing is more of a project than a product. It's something that I enjoy playing around with and it relaxes me. Anyone who just wants something that works should do exactly as you said and rent/purchase one.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Its called KnoppMyth, based off Knoppix
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
Right here.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
regardless of platform (windoze/linux) a good htpc/pvr once setup/configured shouldn't need the keyboard & mouse; just a remote control.
It functions like a TiVo on steroids, except it's a PC (or a Mac).
Almost everything should be taken care of via the frontend, and for everything else (occassional admin type stuff) there's SSH, VNC, etc over your network.
*shrug*
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
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.
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
OS X, but not Tiger yet because M-Audio does not have working drivers for the Sonica with 10.4 yet, and if I can't have DTS audio, there's no point in going on with life. :)
Word of warning if you are going to use the mini:
The EyeTV software somehow manages to record and display HDTV signals okay on the mini, but HDTV playback via any other means (Quicktime, VLC, etc.) is damn near impossible, due to the relatively low CPU and GPU power of the mini.
So, if you are mainly watching DVD's and using the EyeTV 500 pretty much exclusively for your HDTV, it's all fine and dandy, but if you plan on running other HD sources through the mini, you will not be happy with it.
If you are a Linux geek and want to play back a wide variety of HD sources, you are probably better off setting up a MythTV box with a high-def video card.
If you are not a Linux geek, I reccomend throwing money at the problem: A dual-G5 tower is a video processing god.
For now, I'm happy enough with the mini. A year from now, when a lot more HD options are out there, I should be able to swap in something beefier (i.e. the XBox360, the next-gen PlayStation, or a newer and better Apple option) while leaving the real meat of my system, the projector and the stereo, exactly as it is.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.