Linux & Media Center PC

alanrowell

Anyone know a suitable Linux that could be used for a Media Centre PC. It must be able to support Freeview decoders & HDMI as well as the "usual" Media Centre facilities

fergual2

Mythtv is probably an option - but not 100% sure have a look here...

http://www.mythbox.co.uk/intel-flying-creek-new-mythboxhd.htm

Conor_3

Ubuntu have a Medibuntu distribution but at the end of the day pretty much any review you can find will tell you the Windows Media Centre in Windows Vista is the best of them all. All the Linux ones struggle in one aspect or another - even moreso now the main TV EPG database project closed.

fwor

I guess some people get on well with MythTV and others are not so lucky. I've had a few problems in the past, but now have a setup with 3 tuners, two backends and (potentially) many frontends all working under Ubuntu quite reliably.

Mythbuntu gives you a "PVR appliance" and distro in one go - one of my combined frontend/backend/tuner boxes installed this straight off the CD with only minor configuration via the Mythbuntu Control Centre - no command line work required at all. The drivers for my Hauppauge card were already shipped in the kernel.

I don't understand the previous comment about the EPG. The US based one closed and had to be reformed as a subscription-based service, but AFAIK the free Radio Times based UK EPG is still up and running, and over here we have a transmitted 8-day EIT EPG anyway, which is good enough for me.

A recent comment on here suggested that Windows Media Centre does not use the UK transmitted EPG, which if true would be another good point in favour of MythTV - but I can't confirm that as I've never used WMC!

Conor_3

Windows Media Centre does indeed download an EPG - the beauty of that being that you get the proper ITV and BBC ones for the postcode you put in during setup.

fwor

The beauty of using the ~transmitted~ EPG is that you should always see the correct programme info for the channels you are viewing.

People (like me) who are on the boundary of two regions - who might be receiving different programmes depending on which transmitter they are receiving from - presumably have to do something more than just put in the postcode to get the correct EPG?

If I understand it correctly, WMC ignores the transmitted EPG and needs to be permanently connected to the internet to keep its guide up to date.

Having said that, I must admit that I used to use the downloaded Radio Times EPG and preferred it, as it seemed to have better (more review-like) descriptions of the programmes.

mdbarber

In my humble opinion none of them, either myth or ms mce come any where close to the likes of media portal (open source) and gbpvr free but not os, unfortunately both windows but wth, u cant have everything

fwor

mdbarber wrote: »

In my humble opinion none of them, either myth or ms mce come any where close to the likes of media portal (open source) and gbpvr free but not os, unfortunately both windows but wth, u cant have everything

Interesting - what do these two do that Myth doesn't, or what do they do better?

Do you reckon either would run Ok on a 1.2Ghz PIII laptop with a USB freeview tuner? Reason I ask is that I currently use Hauppauge's own software on that laptop, and it really is rubbish.

mdbarber

fwor wrote: »

Interesting - what do these two do that Myth doesn't, or what do they do better?

Do you reckon either would run Ok on a 1.2Ghz PIII laptop with a USB freeview tuner? Reason I ask is that I currently use Hauppauge's own software on that laptop, and it really is rubbish.

Both really well presented and nice to use with remote, also both seemed to support a lot more hardware, a few of the setups i tried wouldn't work with mythtv but things are changing and i wouldn't hesitate to go to linux if oob hw support was improved

fwor

I can see your point about hardware. Up until the latest release I was having to install updated firmware and driver files to get MythTv to work, but the latest version 0.21 under linux kernel 2.6.24-16 required no such messing about for the two different Hauppauge cards that I'm using.

However, if you are using less well-known hardware, the experience may still not be so good... The only way to know for sure is to try it.

The thing that I really like about MythTv is the ease with which you can set up remote frontends around the house, but IMO the backend implementation is unnecessarily complex (e.g. using mySQL to store prog data).

mdbarber

fwor wrote: »

I can see your point about hardware. Up until the latest release I was having to install updated firmware and driver files to get MythTv to work, but the latest version 0.21 under linux kernel 2.6.24-16 required no such messing about for the two different Hauppauge cards that I'm using.

However, if you are using less well-known hardware, the experience may still not be so good... The only way to know for sure is to try it.

The thing that I really like about MythTv is the ease with which you can set up remote frontends around the house, but IMO the backend implementation is unnecessarily complex (e.g. using mySQL to store prog data).

sounding good, are there any media center distro's with this version built in?
i have a hauppage 500 pci the twin tuner version is this likely to be supported oob (it works with everything but vista prem mc (some strange conflict with the ati 1250)) chip board im using)