Linux and Media PCs

[Fester]

Hi,

Does anyone know if Linux is a good operating system for making a media PC? By that, a mean a computer that has functions somewhere like a Tivo...

What software comes to mind?

I do all this already using an EPIA SP1300 board, a streamzap remote, RF keyboard and mouse, Medio, and Snapstream BeyondTV. I'd like to see if I can build one using Linux instead of Windows...

Fester

[Unit21]

Hi Fester,


Linux as a MediaPC is possible and qorks quite well.
I personally recommed MythTV as it most has all the functionality you need and also has Client/Server capabilites.
It uses mplayer as the media layer and some other straightforward OpenSource software like MySQL for the server-part,
so it shouldn't be too hard to set up.
Even I managed to get it running on my Mandriva-box.
It is a bit of a resource-hog though, so your hardware might not be up to it...

Anyway, you can read more about it here:

http://www.mythtv.org/

And download a ready-made distribution built on Knoppix (Debian) here:

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/

As far as I can tell the distro can be used as a LiveCD.
Have fun!

 :-)

[Fester]

Hi Unit21,

Thanks for the very useful information. This will come in handy.

I'm going to remove the Windows hard drive from my media PC and try to re-build the PC as a Linux machine.

As a matter of fact, I just tried Knoppix yesterday. It loaded flawlessly from CD. I also tried Ubuntu the day before. Both OSes run at the about the same speed, however, Knoppix bundles a lot more software. The Ubuntu 5.10 live CD generated several error messages during boot. Knoppix did not generate any errors.

Fester

[Fester]

Unit21 wrote:
Linux as a MediaPC is possible and qorks quite well.

Howdy!

I haven't posted in a very long time. I wanted to let you know that I've completed my little "freevo" computer. It doesn't sport Linux since I had too many problems getting Ubuntu 5 installed on an EPIA SP 13000 mini-itx board. I could have tried other Linux, but I had Windows sitting around...

The final machine is an EPIA SP 13000 mini-itx with 1 GB ram, 400 GB SATA HD and Windows XP Home.

I use BeyondTV 4.4 to record shows, and watch TV. This configuration with a Gyration wireless mouse and keyboard works incredibly well.

I did try Sage, Hauppaugge Win TV and the Yahoo Beta software, but none of these worked properly. BeyondTV 4.4 is glitch-free on my small 1.3 GHZ system. I can even watch record shows while it's recording other shows in the background.

The machine is housed in a Travla 137 case which sits in the cabinet under the TV set. The Travla case makes it look like another piece of the entertainment system instead of a computer.

I'm very pleased.

Fester

[coldfish]

Nice,  Ive built a fairly basic HTPC that is mainly used for emulation at the moment, but it has Vivo so I can record/timeshift TV, plus all the other media features that come with PCs.

The machine is an old Duron 1gig mATX board with a Gf2 GTS vivo Gfx card, running XP.  All in a purpose built 300mm cube case.  for the modest hardware specs, it does a pretty good job at all the things I throw at it.

I was considering building something smaller/handheld using one of the Via nanoITX boards but that idea's on hold now I have my GP2X for portable media playing.  Might still get one of those boards anyway...  ;O)

[Tomas]

I heard that MythTV is good for that. There is also some mediapc distros or even live cd for that.. I have not tried these myself though.

[Tomas]

As a matter of fact, I just tried Knoppix yesterday. It loaded flawlessly from CD. I also tried Ubuntu the day before. Both OSes run at the about the same speed, however, Knoppix bundles a lot more software.

Are you planning to install it onto the HD? then i highly recommend ubuntu over knoppix. You can just apt-get the software you need afterwards and i find it much better than knoppix when it is gonna be installed. Knoppix is only better in my opinion if you gonna run it from the cd.

I recommend getting the newer ubuntu or kubuntu edgy 6.0 release though

[motrucker]

Fester wrote:
Hi Unit21,
As a matter of fact, I just tried Knoppix yesterday. It loaded flawlessly from CD. I also tried Ubuntu the day before. Both OSes run at the about the same speed, however, Knoppix bundles a lot more software. The Ubuntu 5.10 live CD generated several error messages during boot. Knoppix did not generate any errors.

Fester

Try a newer version of Ubunto, like 6.10. It's much improved in many areas......
Although I don't, several friends have set up GREAT media machines with Ubuntu.

[Unit21]

Howdy Fester.

Long time no post... Just thought I´d update you on my experiences with Linux MediaPCs so far...

Since I last posted here I have changed my Linux-box from Mandriva to Suse, or rather OpenSuse. MythTV installs and runs like a charm. It is easily added by connecting to an online upgrade-server within Suses update utility.
As an added perk installing Myth onto OpenSuse also puts multimedia-stuff into OpenSuse.

My setup is a 2.4Ghz P4 with an old nVidia GeForce 4200 card.
MythTV runs smooth and plays pretty much any media-file I can throw at it, but my gfx-card is a bit sluggish sometimes. Not so much during playback, but the menus can sometimes slow down to a crawl...

I also have a MediaPC in my livingroom running Windows MCE since this is the only software that integrates with my SetTopBox. I receive TV through my DSL as a streaming service kind of deal...
But to be fair, Windows MCE really doesn´t work as well as I hoped and I therefore have all my mediafiles hosted on the Linux-box. It just feels safer to have the files on a system that doesn´t crash a couple of times a week.
Besides, Linux systems are built for client/server tasks so I can boot pretty much any PC or MAC in the house to display mediafiles from my Linux-box using the MythTV interface.

Anyway, if any of you guys want to play around with Mediacenter PCs on Linux, based on my experience, I think you should have a minimum setup of:

P4 2Ghz CPU
nVidia Geforce 6600 or better
1Gig memory

I also think that MythTV is the best Mediacenter application for Linux. Especially because of it´s client/server model. If you install it using OpenSuse 10.2 you get a really neat system that is easy to maintain and installs MythTV real easy. It will also host a nice MythTV-backend server that you can connect thin clients to. Anything above Via Epia 600Mhz Eden systems should work fine as MythTV frontends.

The Knoppix-based KnpppMyth is even easier to install, but is a bit picky about hardware. It is really easy to use for booting any PC that it supports into a MythTV-frontend.
A  nice and easy way to have a Mediacenter in the kitchen...   ;-)

By the by,

Has anyone of you guys played around with the thought of an Amiga-based Mediacenter. At least for playing music and video - and maybe watching TV?!
An Amiga-PPC with a PCI-expansion should be up to the task... And the frontend for the system can be built in Hollywood or even Scala...

Any thoughts??
Did anyone try it??

[Tomas]

MythTV runs smooth and plays pretty much any media-file I can throw at it, but my gfx-card is a bit sluggish sometimes. Not so much during playback, but the menus can sometimes slow down to a crawl...

Do you use the official nvidia driver or the default open source driver? I dont see why the menus should be slow if you use the official driver.

[Fester]

Unit21 wrote:

MythTV runs smooth and plays pretty much any media-file I can throw at it, but my gfx-card is a bit sluggish sometimes. Not so much during playback, but the menus can sometimes slow down to a crawl...

Hi Unit21,

I had the exact same problem with SageTV. The menus would be so slow I couldn't use it. To my surprise, Snapstream's BeyondTV 4 works great on a via epia 1.3mhz board with Windows XP Home and BeyondTV costs much less than SageTV.

Now that the media pc works well, it's no longer available for hobbying ha!. My wife just loves it and uses it to record all sorts of shows. I'll have to buy some other machine to explore Linux.

Fester