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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).'"
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I run XPMCE -- yeah, yeah, it works and the WAF is 100%. We continue to try MythTV and various F/OSS programs about 3-4 times a year though.
But I think I might stop, soon. I already have a decent little file sharing network between myself and about 100 "close" friends. I think we could probably extend this to 1000 people and still keep intruders and others out. I have about a 10mbps pipe at home (beta) that should be available everywhere within a year. One of the providers wants to see it for $19.99 per month (as long as Congress stays out!)
So that leaves me with my subjust line: when will we not need a dedicated box anymore?
Bandwidth is almost free, compared to any previous bandwidth before it. 10mbps is just as fast as I can run to the video store and back (depending on the codec used and other parameters, but its close). If I keep maybe 10% of my content on my PC and share it with the 100 out there, I bet we'd have it covered pretty well even considering duplicates for backup. Maybe we need a protocol/program that takes BitTorrent and allows a network of users to safely share video/audio in a wide-area RAID configuration. The other day I lost a CD (AAC's actually, my car stereo supports it) that had about 1000 minutes of music on it. I run my AACs lower than 128kbps for the car. I had the entire set of albums downloaded from a friend in maybe an hour or so, I'd guess.
The future for me is a system similar to AKIMBO (but open source and needing very little in the way of complex hardware) -- a set top box, maybe 60-100gig hard drive, the ability to copy data to the unit from my workstation, and the ability to set it up in this wide area RAID configuration with my friends.
True "peer" to "peer" sharing of media, but no complexity needed that is the norm with an MCE -- you don't need terabytes of data, 2-4 tuner cards (my XPMCE has 4: 2 SD and 2 HD) as you can download the shows from BT or whoever else may have the data already, or even a DVD player.
What would this system be missing? (I just typed as I thought it up, FYI)
/dev/random
I SERIOUSLY need to see the boxed set!
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
Right-o, why do we still care about Blu-Ray and HD-DVD as solutions like this become more the norm, and pay-for-rights media becomes more readily available for download?
hi mom!
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.
... I'd like to see a decent article that actually covers ALL the aspects of setting up a media PC.
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
you could do a samba share and playback/stream almost anything on a non-linux HTPC solution (given enough elbow grease and initial config)
:)
But of course if you already had a linux backend why not have a linux front end... usually the biggest barrier is comfortableness with linux (or a certain adventersome spirit if a life long windoze user)... once you get over that it's pretty straightforward
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Even better is the 400 disc DVD changer and a video patch panel with a remote control. That's ooh aaahhh. No PC required.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
DLNA, the digital living network alliance, http://www.dlna.org/about is a group working on standards to make it streamlined for your TV to grab files off your windows server, linux server, mp3 player, et cetera. Basically makes all your devices share the media together. I know nothing about it other than the roughest overview, but if anyone else knows of it please comment.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I've been running a linux home entertainment box for a couple years now. I use SuSE ( I think I have Suse 9.3 on there now) and a matrox video card with TV out. My sound I run directly into my stereo system. I use mplayer mostly to play my videos and I still use mp3blaster to play my tunes. Although I have a wireless mouse n keyboard hooked up to it, it's a pain because I still need to get up and turn on the monitor because the text is too hard for me to read on my TV.
The computer I've been using recently for this task has kind of been overkill so I was happy to find today the Mvix Multimedia Player. As far as I know it runs linux. Just needs a harddrive installed and it's ready to run. I'm thinking of replacing my computer with it so I can use my computer for other tasks (I can always find something). Anyone heard of Mvix before?
*DrugCheese rants*
It looks like the media center standards are going to be wrappd around UPnP technologies. Specifically DHWG UPnP.
In setting up various test and used Media Servers and DVR systems, it all comes back to a standard for the servers and the clients.
Windows Media Center takes a lot of flack being MS, but it works in this senerio for a lot of items, as it uses UPnP.
It is only a start though, as should have been stronger as UPnP was built into WindowsXP from 2001. MS will be adding more UPnP technologies in the upcoming Longhorn Server, as well as the Vista clients will also be more robust even as home media servers.
Not that we will all run to use the MS technologies, but it will push the consumer market as they are the 800lb Gorilla, heck this is what the XBox 360 is using and I already know a lot of 360 owners that are adopting other UPnP and Media Center devices because of this 'little' push already.
Also the Media Extenders that were initially created for Windows Media Center are DHWG UPnP compatible already and are helping to create a device market. (And they don't have to use Windows Media Center PCs, most of them support UPnP streaming from any server, especially the newer models.
There are tons of good UPnP clients and Server technologies and devices out there, check out everything from TwonkyMedia for servers to D-Link for standalone clients.
Maybe someone could do a google and provide a more complete list of compatible server and client products, if so please add to this thread to help people out trying to piece together a good system using MS or non-MS technologies.
Take Care,
TheNetAvenger
from OreillyNetd ia/2005/06/22/myth_tv.htmld ia/2005/08/17/myth_tv.htmld ia/2005/11/02/myth-tv.htmld ia/2005/12/07/myth-tv.html
/ 27/linux_media_pc.html/ 29/mythtv_hacks.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalme
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalme
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalme
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalme
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/05
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12
I also use ubuntu for a multimedia PC. Actually setting it up is nothing special. I'm using low end hardware, a 1000 MHz Duron, 512 MB RAM, an nVidia geforce4 ($30 new) with S-video output, and the onboard sound of the Asus A7N8X-X. This computer is in our living room and connected to a wired 100 Mbit network. I connected the video card and the sound to a home theatre reciever using S-video and RCA cables, respectively. Ubuntu detected and configured all of my hardware automatically. I downloaded the latest nvidia driver installer and ran it, it installed cleanly and I used their settings GUI to configure the TV output. Then, I had to restart X to get the TV output working. Next I installed mplayer and downloaded all the codecs from their website. All of my multimedia stuff is on my office computer, so I share it with the multimedia computer using NFS. This folder is accessed by an icon on the GNOME desktop, and nautilus file manager shows nice big preview thumbnails of movies, and also previes sounds when the cursor is held over the icon. I watch movies using mplayer (it's able to play everything I've thrown at it), and listen to music using Beep Media Player, gnome-cd, and for internet radio, Streamtuner is excellent for finding quality streams. The cheapo graphics card didn't come with a remote, but a wireless optical mouse ($15) works just as well on the couch cushion right beside me. Our DVD player is getting quite a coating of dust on it these days.
This is the most uninformative article yet on Slashdot. Other than the details of the workarounds for the different hardware on his system to work with linux (and what's new in that! LOL!), there's no information about what the interface is like, how does he control it using a TV-like remote, capture HDTV, view TV schedules, pause live tv, skip commercials automatically, etc.
/. Pity!
This is just another we can (try to) do it with Linux article. The guy should have at least tried using MythTV and told us the actual issues in setting that up.
Compared to the commercial products like Sage, BeyondTV, and of course Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition, this is a 5-year old's level of gratification. How easy it is to satisfy a Linux nerd - something as simple as streaming stuff off a different computer is enuf to get an article and be featured on
But where is the epic struggle in that?
Great minds think alike. However, as a True Linux User (TM) I've resorted to converting all my media into ASCII so I could view it in GNU nano by keeping my fingers on ^V. True, it's mostly porn and it takes a lot of my time but i feel my self-respect is worth it !!!
After a while, I don't even see the code. Just blonde, brunette, redhead.
-- This void intentionally left null.
I've built 3 mythTV based Linux boxes now, and I'm always interested in the different configurations. If he truly got this MSI box (which I've seen before), it would be nice to see if he got the LCD to do anything useful besides the time, and does the volume knob actually work. He also ignores the remote, and how he actually controls the thing on TV. Even with wireless, a keyboard and mouse on your TV are far inferior to a good UI with a remote control.
To the author: Go back and get some more specifics, then revisit your article. Linux people are devils, we're all about the details.
-- I have fans? Wow.
better documentation, easier MythTV integration, better hardware support. Had a great time putting together a Myth box with very modern hardware. Blogged about it too.
eh, you shouldn't need to copy it you should just be able to stream it off of wherever it is.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Now I can view the Goatse.ca link also provided by the author with my fresh home media center.
... Must have wrote this Linux.com article. I can't think of any reason such a brief and incomplete article would have made it to the front page. There are 100 better treatments of this subject out there, this is more of a discouragement than motivation to build one on your own.
Check out the Project for Open Source Media(POSM) as they are developing a Linux run set-top HTPC box. I've actually got an alpha version in my living room right now. At the moment it is proof of concept using some 5 year old whiteboxes (with new video card and 200GB HD), Azureus, Gnome Nautilus, some shell scripts and a Packard Bell remote control, but it looks and works great.
In addition to all the standard HTPC features, the POSM box uses RSS feeds with bittorrent enclosures like the awesome Pep Del.icio.us feed) to download great looking video automatically. Plus the POSM guys have gone to trouble of fine tuning the outputs (an Nvidia MX4000, ~$30) so they are nearly broadcast quality with proper whites and overscan.
With a high quality MP4 file (like I'm pulling from the DigitalBicycle Project (I'm a developer on the project) you seriously can't tell the difference between that and television.
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.
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?
Really, it all depends on what the device is going to be used for. I have been planning on making a unit for a while, and here is what I will use it for, and here are my requirements:
Useage: Playing music, and only music, through a receiver.
Requirements:
Storage: Preferably at least 200GB.
Sound quality: Very good - meaning outstanding Linux support and digital optical out.
Noise: silent. There's no point in listening to FLAC files if you have to overpower the machine with the music.
Interaction: wireless remote - shouldn't be too complicated, basically a DVD player's remote, but with even less buttons.
Speed: How fast it boots up - I don't want to have to wait more than 10 seconds, which means that POST better take no time at all, and that kernel better load quickley as well.
Extra-nice touchs:
A case that I fabricate myself to blend in with stereo equipment
LED display like those on CD and DVD players in addition to the on-screen display/navigation.
Why I havn't built it yet:
1) Price - it's too expensive for a college student to have a PSU that doesn't need a fan, and good sound cards cost too much money for said group. With the parts available today (which I wouldn't even want to use, read #2), I would have to spend over $700, which is a lot of money right now for me to listen to music.
2) Availability of parts - I don't want to build one of these until we have solid-state storage that has the capacities I want, and at a moderate price.
I do believe all the mention of Slashdot on Digg.com has brought digg users here....
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
True, it's mostly porn and it takes a lot of my time but i feel my self-respect is worth it !!!
Are you talking about the goatse as the submitter's link?
Okay, this is flipping hilarious. After the whole brouhaha, Slashdot listened to the tyranny of the majority and added nofollow on submitter links. Now we have glorious links like goatse instead. Awesome.
HDTV shouldn't need hardware encoding. For over-the-air HDTV (which is ATSC), the hardware just tunes in the ATSC digital stream and you've got already-encoded MPEG2 High Definition video. Just save the raw MPEG stream.
And there are cards under Linux that support this, like pchdtv.com's HD-3000 PCI card.
Now how well and convenient it is to actually get them working is another question. That's one of the drawbacks of open source.
mplayer -vo aalib video Same result, without the pesky scrolling, plus sound.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Everytime I see an article about building a media center PC, people always seem to use normal composite or S-Video outputs. Is there a good solution for HD output? Is there a video card supported by linux that can do Y-Cr-Cb component video output at 720p or 1080i? I once had an ATI card that would do this, but it only worked in Windows and even then it didn't compensate for overscan so 10% of the screen got chopped off. Some people have been able to use PowerStrip under windows to get certain video cards to output HDTV compatable timings for TVs that support RGB component inputs. Obviously, this solution is less than ideal. Last time I looked, there wasn't a good solution. Maybe things have changed. Ideally, I'd like to find a video card with HDMI output, but I'm guessing that doesn't exist either. Maybe a fellow slashdotter can prove me wrong.
Why not just buy a KISS DP-558 ? Kiss homepage
It is not 100% Open Source but it runs on Linux... it looks just like a large DVD player and the design of the box could be B&O's.
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I didn't know that about the HDTV. That said the way things work, with driver support being what it is and any changes thrown into the mix I'll have to wait to see what kind of CPU utilization turns up when I can get my hands on one.
:)
At $169.98 the price point is much better then last time I looked. Like I said in my post, I'm a believer. But a Tivo is looking incrementally more attractive. I've got to solve the fan-noise issues, sound quality issue and CPU utilization or the project really is just an over-priced geek toy. Which my wife has very little patience for.
Thanks for the info.
Quack, quack.
I have had a MythTV box running for a few months (after earlier unsuccessful attempts with freevo and older MythTV versions.
;)
;)
I boght a Hauppauge PVR350 card (analog TV) and used the "MythTV on Fedora" howto (google) and I was very satified with the results. So satisfied that I bought another Hauppauge PVR500 card so that I ended up with 3 tuners.
My setup is non-standard for two reasons:
1. My HTserver (HTSRV) is located in my server room. This considerably improves the WAF and keeps the living room nice and clean and quiet. I transport the A/V signals over CAT5 (using two baluns) to the point where the cable-TV enters the house. There a modulator mixes the signal with the regular cable channels so I can watch my MythTV HTserver's TV-Out anywhere in the house.
2. Now I needed a way of controlling my MythTV server from behind any of my TV sets. To solve that I used my SqueezeBoxes ( http://www.slimdevices.com/ ). I wrote a Slimserver plugin (Perl) that taps into LIRC and allows me to control the MythTV server with the remotes from the Squeezeboxes.
I'm thinking of replacing my living room audio system with a pair of powered speakers so that I'll end up with 'just' a TV, a small Squeezebox and two speakers. No 5.1 speaker setups for me, I just can't stand all that clutter.
There's another interesting project that I plan to look into. It uses Hauppauge's small and inexpensive $69 MediaMVP boxes (miniature diskless computers that run linux with Remotes and TV-Out) to build MythTV and SlimServer frontends:
http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main
This is nice because it allows you to watch different programs & recordings on different TV-sets, which my current setup doesn't allow you to do. Worth looking into if you're interested in a distributed media network rather than just a boring HTPC or HTSRV
X.
This is not Linux Based Media Center PC... This is just Audio Video output from linux based machine.
If I remember correctly there was firm makes satellite recivers using with Linux. That box do same thing like this machine. It support NFS (Record or playback) also higher model has build in hdd support. Of course it had Satellite and TV inputs...
Man, look latest Tech Show reports, if we call this thing a media center pc, they laugh us with other than mouth...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
As much as I dislike Windows, on a decent machine, I'd much rather use XP MCE over Linux/MythTV. I've used MythTV for a while, and although it is extremely feature rich, it just doesn't feel speedy. I've got a Barton 2500+, and if that isn't enough to run the menu fast enough (I'm assuming faster computers still don't feel set-top-box worthy), there's something wrong. WMCE's interface w/ 3d-accelerated graphics seems very very slick and quick. Something that is needed for your casual user used to the typical quick TV menu responses. Maybe I'm just being picky though.....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
The Server
PC with big disk running linux (or windows if you prefer)
Install Apache
symlink media directories to default apache home directory
Done.
The Player(s)
An old laptop is what I use but you could of course use any pc, maybe a mac mini or whatever takes your fancy.
On the laptop I use firefox with the mplayer plugin - I had to disable local caching in the plugin otherwise it was a bit choppy.
So to play any content from the 'media server' I just browse to it with firefox and click to play.. (and select full screen mode for vids of course) Dead easy and effective enough for my needs.
You could make an interface to the media with perl/php if apache directory listings are not flash enough for you.. ;)
Note this solution would work equally with windows or anything else that runs apache on the server and a browser with media player plugin on the viewer.. which narrows it down to everything out there I think.
Using a laptop for viewing in my case means I can send video output to a tv or projector easily since a tv-out is built in and 'just works'.
The above assumes you have a home network of some kind setup.. and make sure your firewall doesn't allow the world to access your webserver.. ;)
Yes, I too thought it was a overly complicate solution in the article. Modifying an xbox for less than $150 and putting XBMC on it will play all media direct over an SMB share - and that's with S-Video or even Component HD video out and Optical digital sound out.. In fact I play ALL my media (after sold all my CD's) through my xbox - including playing DVD's directly when needed. Currently it connects to a couple of servers, totallying about 300GB of divx/xvid and ogg/mp3 - perhaps a little pr0n too... In fact.. even plays streaming video such as Apple's movie trailers, CNN streaming news, Shoutcast radio etc etc etc. With a modded xbox and a auto-install for XBMC you could be up and running in under 30 minutes (including downloading and burning the CD of the auto-installer). Oh.. and it's small, quiet and fairly neat too, with an IR receiver for it's own - or programmable remotes too if you buy the DVD playback kit (just to get the IR Receiver)
I have been using GeeXboX , based on Linux and MPlayer, for a couple of years and it works well. : ...) ...) ...
You can install it, but it's not necessary. So it's very easy to use.
From the website:
At the time of the first development releases (Dec. 2002), it was only capable of playing DivX movies, but now, nearly every kind of media file can be played with GeeXboX, with the OS supporting
* MPEG 1/2 movies (MPG files, VCDs, DVDs
* MPEG 4 movies (DivX, XviD, H.264
* RealMedia and Windows Media movies.
* OggMedia streams
* Matroska streams
* Audio streams like : MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV (AudioCD), AC3, MusePack (MPC), FLAC
* Network streams : WebRadio and WebTV
* Watching analog TV and digital DVB
So may be it isn't a "Home Media Center" but a standalone media player on steroids.
My city: Barcelona.
Gentoo, like all GNU/Linux distros, uses Linux kernel.
Actually you can choose Linux or BSD.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I recently downloaded and tried out MediaPortal (open source) and I have to say, it's the best I've seen. It scans your collection and downloads plots, actors, box pictures etc from IMDB so you can see everything about a movie. It plays TV/radio with a TV tuner card, has plugins, looks great and is overall fantastic.
I had a bit of a problem controlling it because my remote was sluggish, but I found Bluetooth Remote Control (trial version) on a website yesterday and now I control it from my Bluetooth mobile and it's as if I'm using a keyboard. Even just for the "wow" factor, it's great.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
And me. I call it GNU/Media.
orangeacid
If you want to put people off trying the very capable Linux MC distros and scare them into using Windows MCE, just point them to the article.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
Pentium III 800Mhz
256MB RAM
some nvidia-based card with 64MB
a Pixelview BTTV-based card
Gigabit ethernet
a CRT Nokia 19''
a DVD-ROM of course
This is my "media" linux box.
Now why do we call it "media" is beyond me.
Gets stuff from the file server and plays it smoothly..
Music, Video, TV, Radio
With some nice Logitech speakers
May seem crazy but when i buy a new computer, it becomes a server.. after a while that gets a little outdated hardware-wise it becomes a desktop and finally what the market today calls a "media" PC.
Why do the whole planet seems to do it the other way around is once more beyond me..
www.lemonodor.com A mostly Lisp weblog
As another /.er pointed out, good front-end tools are necessary to make this use of Linux desktops viable.
Here almost everybody associates "Media Center" to a Windows machine.
Can this be done with left hand only? I need the right hand free for other purposes.
"linux" is a very common word and was not included in your search.
Microsoft is starting to lean to a "put the media wherever and use it at your TV" approach. Probably based on the fact that most people already have computers. W/ the xbox 360 and the Windows Media Extenders you can have your media in your computer room and play it anywhere.
I think this is the right approach. I have my media on a computer in a rack in my back room. Should I get cable I'd build a computer w/ a tv tuner to put in the rack. I don't want a large computer that has to crunch LOTS of data, (particularly to transcode HDTV), sitting making all sorts of noise and heat in my entertainment center. Additionally I don't want one like the one chosen for this article that looks more like my game cube than like my receiver. I want something that no-one even considers is a computer.
What we need is better linux support for things like uPNP-AV appliances, basically thin clients. The last time I looked at it it was pretty weak. But linux would make a great back end on a computer capable of managing my media in an open framework so I did not have to worry about accessing it. I just need a package I can install on some computer w/ a few TV tuners in it and then plug in some media extender that looks nice in my entertainment center and has no fans which can then control the media capabilities of the TV card and manage HD playback.
Until this support is available I will probably forego TV recording and HDTV playback. For everything else, (music playing, non-HD video playing, emulators, image viewing), I'll just use my modded xbox and xbox media center. (For those who have never thought about it, modding a used xbox --which takes about an hour-- and installing xbox media center is the best, easiest, and cheapest way to get about everything except TV recording/timeshifting and HD playback.
I do security
http://linvdr.org/projects/linvdr/index.en.php
A device that plays DVDs, AND can read files from a SMB (Windows, or Samba) share. Maybe something else. I don't care, as many of the available devices force you to navigate a directory heirarchy anyway. Plays mp3, ogg, mpeg2 and 4, avi (Divx and xvid), qt, etc. Preferably with the ability to update codecs/container formats as required, but even being able to play what was current a year ago today would be nice.
What the hell is this all about ? I could have written hundreds of articles like this. What does this article tell me :
1: That ubuntu linux is able to run on an nforce MoBo, realtek 650 sound and an nforce2 video chipset (shocking).
2: NFS can be used to mount shares over a network (so that's what the N stands for)
3: Rhytmbox can be used to play and organise music files
4: Totem is a videoplayer
So in conclusion it tells me how to install linux, it doesn't bring anything new or innovating to table. What I wanted to see was some creativity in implementing linux for "home theater" use.
Read the section about linux home entertainment in "Home hacking projects for geeks" by O'reilly instead
In Soviet Russia elephant rides you!
I love it when people over-simplify and fail to actually investigate both sides of this issue. It is thinking like the above that almost stopped VCR's with the claim they'd be the end of movies and theatres, when in fact they ended up increasing the rate of movies, the money in the movie business, and the profit of movie companies. This was accomplished by the movie industry changing their business models to exploit the new technology, not fight it. It's even more futile to fight it now as the end users don't rely on third parties (e.g., VCR manufactures) being legally able to build the technology. The users can create the technology themselves whether legal or not, and do so in secret.
Radio was going to kill music production. Cable TV was going to kill networks. VCR was going to kill movies. P2P/filesharing is going to kill movies/music. Sound familiar? I have yet to see a single example of where such claims have ever proven right. (Yes, automobiles put carriage manufactures out of buiness, but that's replacing an old technology with a new one, not destroying the content creation business by changing the delivery technology.)
Sounds like the media is already on a linux backend server? Why not cable the video/audio from the backend to your tv/audio amp and run the frontend on the same system? Savings includes electric power and the $360 he spent on the box.
There is another solution, one that provides access to video and audio data and plays on a TV via 100Mbit ent, hauppauge media mvp ($40 on sale at Radio Shack). The open source project mvpmc.org provides access to mythtv recordings and to other mpeg video and mp3 audio data on your server. Reasonable user interface, extreme small form factor, low power consumption, quite a nice box that appears to do nearly everything the author talks about. Also has a fully functional remote control, a VNC client and a slimp3 player!
Upon reading the article, I thought, hey, maybe I missed some cool HTPC app which ties everything together as neatly as XBMC or MCE. When following the link (which actually worked... a first for slashdot :)) it's just some guy installing Ubuntu and making the Totem player work with his system.
This did _NOT_ deserve a post on slashdot IMHO (or is Ubuntu that hard to install with full video and music support?)
I was thinking of building an project like this, and this was an rather interesting read.
-- Kimme Utsi
That article was useless.. Who cares what hoops he had to jump through to get his particular hardware working. He chose the hardware poorly, making it difficult to set up. This is not relevant to the Home Media Center topic at all, and if anything makes the reader hesitant to use Linux for this purpose.
Relevant topics would have been:
- MythTV: provides an excellent media center interface, on par with anything for Windows or MacOS. It provides features that the others can't/won't provide, such as autoamtic commercial detection/removal, transcoding, etc.
- HDTV integration: Receiver cards, Over-The-Air vs. QAM Cable options, etc.
- Xine, vlc, mplayer - capabilities, strengths, weaknesses.
I use MythTV, and I find it to be great. But, DVD playback on Linux I find to be pretty poor. I want a full-screen DVD player, controlled via an IR remote, which can handle VIDEO_TS directories on a file server (not the actual disk). MacOS X's DVD player is better than the Linux options, and there are many better Windows options (like TheaterTek).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl This is the coolest thing I've ever seen! Nerds really are great man!
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com