HTPC, Linux?

[Someguy]

Ok guys, I have a spare PC I'm thinking of using as a HTPC for the family.

It's not the greatest, but I think it's capable of what I want.

CPU: 3.00 P4
RAM: 512mb
Integrated Graphics

I'd really like to run Linux on it, give it some extra resources anyway. But I want to have something like MCE, what does Linux offer in that department?

I want to be able to have it show artwork to the side of the video if possible. I also need it to accept AVI, MKV and WMV.

What distro should I be looking at?

Thanks !

[TOMMOHAWK_UK]

Have a look at this link http://www.linuxmce.org/ hopefully it will meet most of your requirements. You would do well to use Ubuntu or Kubuntu as your main distribution, in my experience Ubuntu is better for hardware detection than Kubuntu (for some strange reason). The main difference is the desktop environment anyway but as you will be using it as a MCE then this should make little difference.

Hope that helps,

Ken

[Desmo]

I've not tried it myself, but MYthTV is meant to be very good. -- http://www.mythtv.org/

When I get my spare machine up and running with an Ubuntu install I'll be having a play with Myth.

[batty]

:hiya: Mythtv is the best but can be tricky to get working perfectly.

linuxmce is trying to be easier to install, currently in beta. I must give it a go.

Also you can try http://freevo.sourceforge.net/ good basic media center.

Give them all ago, there's plenty of help out their.

Most linux distos have active forums giving good advice and help.

[NikosF]

Another vote for MythTV! I've been using it for about 18 months now - and now have a server (backend) with three clients (frontends) serving TVs in different rooms. It is a VERY, VERY, good program. Setting up is not for the faint of heart, but one of the all-in-one distros like Mythbuntu should make it easy. There is a very good guide written for Fedora : http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php - it's written for FC6, but should be pretty self-explanatory for F8 (if anything it's easier with Fedora 8). The software is now at v0.21.

[mattkhan]

another vote for mythtv here which I run on a debian unstable machine. Installation is trivial (add a debian-multimedia repo to your sources and apt-get install mythtv), configuration is pretty straightforward & if you choose your hardware (TV tuner that is) correctly then it should just work. For example I use a hauppauge nova-t card (~£30 for a single tuner) which was basically plug and play. Meanwhile lirc can handle pretty much any IR remote.

the spec of your machine is v similar to my combined myth backend/frontend machine in an HTPC case, in my case it's a Athlon XP 2800 with 1GB RAM and which is fine for anything up to 720p.

FWIW & off the top of my head, mythtv can give you

- picture gallery
- tv recording
- front end for videos (delegating to media player of your choice so basically anything is playable)
- music playback
- streaming media (mythstream)
- frontend for emulated games (mythgame)
- archiving of recorded material to DVD (mytharchive)
- web frontend (mythweb)

and probably some other stuff, main site here (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

Cheers
Matt

[Someguy]

Thanks for all the responses guys :thumbsup:

I'm going to do some research on what has been suggested, probably give it all ago sometime this week.

I'll report back. Thanks again :smashin:

[batty]

:hiya: How did it go?

[batty]

Have to add Elisa media center to the list.
I think it's in the early stages of development but is very simple to setup and seems to work well with video,music and pictures.

http://elisa.fluendo.com/

No TV function yet but worth a look.

Also me TV is a nice simple TV program I just found, very good

https://launchpad.net/me-tv

Both in Ubuntu repositories

Both well worth a look