Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Building a Linux Home Media Center

Posted by Zonk on from the you-needed-a-project-this-weekend dept.

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).'"

36 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. When will we not need an MCE box? by dada21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)

    1. Re:When will we not need an MCE box? by Cheeze · · Score: 5, Funny

      95% bragging, 5% actual content.

      --
      Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
  3. you know you've stumbled... by ltwally · · Score: 4, Funny
    "My Ogg music files played out of the box. The key to getting MP3 playback to work was installing libmad."
    You know when you've stumbled into linux-super-nerd-land when your media player cannot do MP3 out-of-the-box, but OGG plays just dandy!
    --



    /dev/random
    1. Re:you know you've stumbled... by BootNinja · · Score: 2, Informative

      Redhat has disabled MP3 since RH9, SuSE since I think at least 8.2, and I noticed it was the same on the Mandriva distro I tried about a year and a half ago. Gentoo, on the other hand, will play mp3's as soon as you've emerged whatever media player you use. I don't think it has as much to do with the proprietary codec, so much as fear of some sort of retaliation from RIAA et al. I know the crippled version of xmms that shipped with RH9 displayed some sort of dialog to the effect of "We won't let you play mp3's because of copyright concerns." It seems to be mainly the distros who try to exist as a commercial entity that don't support mp3 out of the box, although, Debian also sees to do the same, as the parent mentioned.

    2. Re:you know you've stumbled... by Trepalium · · Score: 5, Informative

      No, it's not because of copyright concerns. It's the fact the MP3 codec is patented by Fraunhofer IIS. Fraunhofer has said they allow people to use implement the playback portions of their patents as long as the resulting program is distributed for free, but this isn't OSI compatible. The free WinAMP player was okay, putting it on a Debian CD which may be sold was not.

      --
      I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
    3. Re:you know you've stumbled... by swillden · · Score: 3, Informative

      Last time I checked, Windows Media Player supported creating MP3 files

      Last time I chekced WMP was not Free Software. That means (a) it's not legal for you to redistribute WMP, only Microsoft can and (b) Microsoft can (and has) paid for appropriate patent licenses.

      The LAME encoder can still be downloaded freely and plugged into just about anything.

      And the legality of this is questionable, and tricky. Under the "source is speech" argument, it may be that distributing source code is okay. Binary distribution is more problematic, and that's what Linux distros want to do. Distros like Debian, who are very careful about legal issues, find it safest not to distribute encoders (like LAME) at all, and relegate players to "non-free" status, if they're included at all.

      What am I missing here?

      That there are patents on parts of MP3 players and encoders, and those patents create difficulties for Free Software implementations. People may go ahead and do it anyway (similarly, libdvdcss is a circumvention device and is illegal according to the DMCA, but that doesn't stop individuals from using it), but that doesn't mean that people who want to obey the law can do it.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  4. Here we go again... by radiotyler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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!
  5. TFA misses a lot. by chrome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:TFA misses a lot. by solarium_rider · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      -- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
  6. Re:Why wireless? by HolyCrapSCOsux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
  7. DLNA is working on this by digitalsushi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:DLNA is working on this by Paul+Bristow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's based on UPnP AV Mediaserver protocols. There are projects around working on UPnP clients and servers and sample code from Intel for Linux.

      It's complicated to get your head around because of the Jargon used in DLNA but a little effort makes you realise what an elegant, distributed, powerful set-up this is. My favourite part is the proxy media server service that allows a server to also act as the directory listing for ALL servers on the network, providing a simple way to access all media, regardless of location.

      --
      - Paul
  8. Mvix by DrugCheese · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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*
  9. Building My MythTV Box by anandpur · · Score: 5, Informative

    from OreillyNet
    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/06/22/myth_tv.html
    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/08/17/myth_tv.html
    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/11/02/myth-tv.html
    http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmed ia/2005/12/07/myth-tv.html

    http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/05/ 27/linux_media_pc.html
    http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/ 29/mythtv_hacks.html

  10. Here's how I did it by flar2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  11. Stupidest article ever seen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    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 /. Pity!

    1. Re:Stupidest article ever seen by freeweed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      something as simple as streaming stuff off a different computer is enuf to get an article and be featured on /. Pity!

      Considering how poorly device manufacturers are at making this work, you have no business making fun of this article.

      I've looked at about a dozen consumer-level devices to do this, and so far, every single one has some stupid dependency or other. Whether it's the need for their "server" software, or the full-blown "you must run Windows or get the fuck out of my face" like Media Centre, NO ONE has come up with this:

      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.

      You laugh, but multi-billion dollar companies haven't managed this yet. A basic PC with a good Knoppix/Ubuntu install/CD would do this. I think it's worth an article, if only to show just how stupid the consumer electronics market is.

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
    2. Re:Stupidest article ever seen by greg1104 · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you think this article is stupid now, just wait until it shows up again as a dupe.

  12. It would have been an awfully short article... by Minwee · · Score: 4, Informative
    ...if he dropped a KnoppMyth CD in the drive, booted it, selected "Install Everything" and then confirmed that he did want the default settings a few times.

    But where is the epic struggle in that?

    1. Re:It would have been an awfully short article... by ladybugfi · · Score: 3, Informative

      KnoppMyth is not the uber-solution. I have built a KnoppMyth box and while some of the stuff worked out of the box, there were still a lot of things that required tweaking to get right. I had SATA problems, MythTV FULL SCAN problems, PID problems (PID as in DVB provider id), non-existing /usr/local/bin/mplayer, non-functional DVB subtitling etc. And in addition to Myth config, I also had to tweak xine config to get 5.1 passthru.

      While this struggle was not epic (although I did document it in Finnish, 5 pages or so, instead of 1 in the article), I would not call KnoppMyth a SW that you "just drop a CD in the drive and install". But then again, I didn't expect that when deciding that KnoppMyth would be my HTPC SW.

  13. Re:Me too. by erveek · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  14. Article is definetly skimpy by fwitness · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  15. Gentoo is a better choice by billstr78 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  16. Great by Justin+Shreve · · Score: 2

    Now I can view the Goatse.ca link also provided by the author with my fresh home media center.

  17. Slashdot Editor's Brother ... by billstr78 · · Score: 2

    ... 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.

  18. Re:Why wireless? by norton_I · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  19. No pictures, no codec information, just sysadmin by heroine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  20. It's mostly porn? by ergo98 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  21. Re:MythTV under Mandriva, works for me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...can't wait to try to find a HDTV tuner with hardware based encoding that also works under Linux...

    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.
  22. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  23. My own HTSRV project status by Xenna · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  24. Quick & dirty 'home media center' for the lazy by slashmojo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    My 'solution' for the terminally lazy and/or cheap.. (like me)

    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.. ;)

  25. Re:What is a "Home Media Center?" by JazzHarper · · Score: 2, Informative

    You should get a Squeezebox. I think it meets all your requirements:

    * Excellent sound quality. Supports MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, WAV and Ogg Vorbis.
    * Analog, digital and digital/optical outputs. Analog quality is better than any sound card.
    * The box is absolutely silent--no moving parts. You can keep your server in a different room from your listening area. You can use just about any existing/surplus computer as your server; there's no need to build a fanless machine.
    * Completely controllable through its remote or from a web-based interface.
    * Display is visible across the room.
    * Takes about one second to come out of hibernation.

    The downsides:
    - Form factor--doesn't fit in a rack.
    - The web-based interface is clunky.

    The server software is open source and runs on Linux, Windows and Mac. There is a Squeezebox emulator called SoftSqueeze that you can use to try out the system before you buy anything.

    I don't work for Slim Devices--just a satisfied customer.

  26. Does he work for Microsoft? by Conor+Turton · · Score: 2
    I've just RTFA. Talk about an excellent job in putting people off doing it the Linux way. "This didn't work so I had to do this bodge. That didn't work so I had to do this bodge. This other thing didn't work so I got out my trusty string to hold it all together."

    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
  27. Re:You are admitting to illegal copying of media by Dashing+Leech · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "In the end, all of us will have to pay more since and jobs will be lost."

    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.)