Building a Linux Home Media Center

RomanianClimber writes "Tom Lynema assembles an Ubuntu-based Linux home media center. 'Like a lot of people nowadays, I have a growing collection of digital media. My digital media is stored on a home Linux server. Most of the digital media players available today do not support protocols to connect to a Linux server, which make them unsuitable for my use. I realized the best way to connect my digital media library with my home theatre was to build my own Linux home media center (LHMC).'"

Comments

TFA misses a lot.

[chrome]

The article spends about 95% of its words talking about how to get that specific hardware working under linux, and then one or two paragraphs actually talking about the interesting stuff - the software that he uses to run the media center. He even neglects to mention how he controls it.

Isn't there front-ends to make this stuff easier than having a gnome desktop on the TV? What about remote control devices and infra-red support? Is there a nice way to navigate all the media?

These are the things I couldn't solve easily two years ago ... I'd like to see a decent article that actually covers ALL the aspects of setting up a media PC.

Re:TFA misses a lot.

[solarium_rider]

I agree, he spends most the article on how he set up his wireless card and how he set his clock?

For starters, here's a list of things it would of been nice if he covered if he were to fill us in on the media part(in no particular order):
* Sound card? Is he using on board sound? Does it support hardware mixing, if not, what kind of software mixing is he using. Does he have a digital connection to his receiver for ac3 passthrough, and pcm output?

* More information on the video card. He says it supports multiple HD standards, but says it only has a composite and s-video output (i'm assuming in addition to the dvi/vga,) but no component out. How is he gonna output HD then? AFAIK, the nvidia support for HD out requires component out, else you have to set your custom modelines (as the latest nvidia driver 1.0.8178.) While hd output isn't necessary for a home media center I suppose, it increases your geek factor. Is the CPU gonna be fast enough to output 1080i?

* Power consumption. Would be nice for him to try and reduce the power on the unit, when it's not being used, considering it'll probably be idle most the time.

* Choice of case for something thats pleasing to the eye, and silent to the ear. Not a big problem if it's tucked away. But usually these things are in the living/family rooms alongside the entertainment center.

* Controllability: How is he controlling it? x11vnc? Mouse? Keyboard? lirc? What kinds of issues do you run into with these different choices.

* Software: He spends out two paragraphs on using totem and rhythmbox. How well did these integrate with his media in being able to play everything (other than the spew about OGG and mp3, flac anyone?), why is it important that gstream is uninstalled? Would be nice if he had tried some kind of fully-featured software that plays video and audio...He mentions a 6 in 1 card flash reader...is he using it? If so, with which software?

Worst LMHC article ever.

Re:Why wireless?

[norton_I]

My (admittedly old) 200 disc DVD changer is slow and annoying. I would much rather have my DVDs ripped onto a HTPC or streamed over the network from my fileserver.

No pictures, no codec information, just sysadmin

[heroine]

So where are the pictures of the HTPC? What format is the media stored in? What movies does it have? How many movies does it have? How much does it cost to have a dedicated NFS server, a separate dedicated HTPC, a monitor for the NFS server and a second monitor for the HTPC? In what country can you afford to have 2 of everything? Is it supposed to play movies or just mount a filesystem over NFS? How many times have you set up NFS anyway?

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