Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Tom Lynema assembles a 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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Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 17:49 UTC (Thu) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I have Debian running on a Mac Mini that is a perfect set-top machine. It plays any DVD and just about any media file I have on my network. "Just about" any file because media support on Linux/non-x86 is a little different. Regardless, its a well-supported, tiny form factor machine.

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 17:53 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

Is there similar hardware using FOSS drivers for the video and wireless?

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 17:55 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]

Pretty spare article. And no MythTV?

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 22:03 UTC (Thu) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Probably didn't want to contaminate his system with Qt binaries.

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 13, 2006 3:32 UTC (Fri) by csamuel (subscriber, #2624) [Link]

And how, pray, does one contaminate a system with GPL'd code ?

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 13, 2006 16:47 UTC (Fri) by aglitke (subscriber, #21029) [Link]

What a horrible troll. He didn't seem to have any problems using binary nvidia drivers or (for God's sake) ndiswrapper.

Building a Linux home media center (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 12, 2006 18:12 UTC (Thu) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link]

I am looking at lmbox as a better implimentation of VDR.
My first try at compiling failed. Then I was called to bed ;)
Has anyone tried this "new" VDR software?

UPnP, anyone?

Posted Jan 12, 2006 22:15 UTC (Thu) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link]

It doesn't appear the author searched very hard for a digital media adapter that can talk to a Linux server. Most DMAs today use UPnP to access content, and since UPnP is a four-year-old open standard, of course there are Free implementations. GMediaServer, for one.

UPnP, anyone?

Posted Jan 13, 2006 14:17 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (subscriber, #22762) [Link]

I tried the D-Link media player, supposably using UPnP standard, and no Linux app was able to send files to it, especially the gmedia server you mention.
It didn't take me too much time to return that machine and continue to use my Linux box instead as it's still way easier to configure than trying to get the DLink to work.

Closed captioning?

Posted Jan 12, 2006 23:19 UTC (Thu) by bshowalter (guest, #538) [Link]

A few months ago I was researching options for building a Linux-based PVR system, and was going to use the Hauppauge MediaMVP to bring content to TV's. However, the project is currently on hold until I can verify that closed captioning will work with the setup I have in mind (Hauppauge PVR-250, MythTV, MediaMVP's). My wife and I can't hear the sound, so closed captioning is a must for us.

Does anyone know if closed captioning will work with a LHMC?

Closed captioning?

Posted Jan 20, 2006 9:23 UTC (Fri) by grouch (subscriber, #27289) [Link]

Mplayer has an option [ -subcc ] that will "[d]isplay DVD Closed Caption (CC) subtitles. These are NOT the VOB subtitles, these are special ASCII subtitles for the hearing impaired encoded in the VOB userdata stream on most region 1 DVDs. CC subtitles have not been spotted on DVDs from other regions so far."

I use a Hauppauge PVR250 in my P4/2.4 GHz running Debian 'Sarge'. Being able to do 'cat /dev/video0 > somefile.mpg' is very handy for encoding home videos. I also use it with an R59 cable (75 ohm) to watch tv in a window: cat /dev/video0 | mplayer - -cache 8192

See the ivtv driver. I've been using the 0.3.7b version successfully for a long time. It includes a handy GUI for channel changing in the utils directory.

See also MythTV, which supports closed captioning.

ndiswrapper

Posted Jan 13, 2006 20:34 UTC (Fri) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]

Given that linux.com is a well-known site and this HOWTO - although a little brief - will probably appeal to many, it is really unfortunate that Mr. Lynema opted for ndiswrapper. The more unfortunate as he is using it for the Ralink chipset which won the Linux Journal award just some time ago.