HTPC Project?
I’ve been thinking about starting a home theater project. Those of you who know me know that I’m not a big TV watcher, but I do enjoy movies and music. Trouble is, I have tons of music in mp3 format (having ripped most of my CDs) and digital images (having a digital camera), as well as lots of emulated games (having a small library of Roms). I was not interested in streaming this stuff over to the TV/stereo from the computer – I use a laptop. Rather, I want to build a small media server that would connect to the TV/stereo and act as storage for all that stuff. I found the perfect solution!Of course its Linux based, and its called Freevo which I imagine is a play off the TiVo name (also Linux based, I believe). It looks like you can get decent system up and running with mediocre hardware, but I’m planning to get a nice fat hard drive and a decent video card for games. If anyone else has an HTPC project they’d like to share, please post.
I found this thread on someone else’s project which gives you a flavor for what you can do with a PC that’s really the center of home entertainment.
It seems a long time ago since Gateway tried to make a home theater PC. It may have been a flop only because of the OS. To be fair, Microsoft’s new Media Center looks decent as well, but I’m more interested in playing with Linux.
Comment posted on 1-12-2005
I’ve been researching the possiblities and am finding that most folks are using MythTV. Here’s a page on the MythTV site with some screenshots. I’ve found a ton of good resource material like BYOPVR.COM. The acronym stands for “Build your own PVR”. The forums at Kustompcs.co.uk are a good place to hunt around for info, and there are several stories on slashdot about this
topic. A recent discussion there talks about the use of Linux for this type of thing.
The thing I ran across that is an admittedly minor sticking point is that playing DVDs in your computer is illegal! That is, it’s illegal if you use
linux as your OS. You’ll remember that the 16 year old Norwegian Jon Johansen who ‘cracked’ the CSS encryption scheme in DVDs so he could play them on his non-windows machine was aquitted in Norway, but it’s still illegal to distribute that code. I haven’t looked into this at all yet, but it seems like all of the linux based systems I would want to use to run this HTPC might, of necessity contain this code?
Comment posted on 1-12-2005
Some interesting facts as I investigate hardware include:
1. 700 megabytes/hour to 2 gigabyte/hour for MPEG-4 and larger for MPEG-2 and RTjpeg
2. I’ll definitely want to use a hardware-based video encoder, such as a Matrox G200 or a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250/350
3. You must use a filesystem that will allow you to create large files. Filesystems known to have problems with large files are FAT and FAT32.
4. Don’t buy ATI if you plan on using Linux now or in the future.
Comment posted on 1-12-2005
On a related note – TiVo CEO resigned today. Clearly theres a lot of competition heating up in this space. Why buy a TiVo when you can’t record one channel and watch another because of the dang digital cable box? Cable is just gonna come out with their own DVR that *will* do it. Why pay for a TiVo at all when you can buy Windows Media Center or just use any of the plethora of free linux-based HTPC solutions? Funny, I only really started investigating this and stuff is changing already…
Comment posted on 1-29-2005
I have really been thinking alot about this project, but I may have been looking in the wrong direction. The new Mac mini might fit in the cabinet much better, run cooler and with a wireless keyboard, be more
functional than a Myth box / Freevo box would be just because its OS X – and well, OS X is slicker than $h1T.
However, I found a less than stellar review for it on Ars Technica. If we understand that Ars Technica is all about ultimate performance, and that all I am looking for is an entertainment component, it might not kill the MacMini idea for me, but I have to agree it is underpowered by today’s new PC standards.
Comment posted on 1-29-2005
I found a more recent comparison of the Mac-mini and the cheapest Dell on the market. Another review and more info on the Mac-mini, specifically, dismantling one.
Comment posted on 2-5-2005
I broke down and picked up a dirt cheap E-Machine for well under $500. The reason was a few fold: I need a powerful machine to work on my current home software project, my iBook HD was full, all my music was living on one drive, and I recently bought a DV camcorder. My problem is solved.
It’s as follows:
Athlon XP 3200+
160GB HD
512MB DDR
GeForce4 MX
DVD+/-RW drive
CDROM drive
Oh, and about 9,000 hours of free AOL!! =)
I still use my iBook for most things. This machine is more or less a network storage device, rendering engine, game machine and will be my DVD burner as soon as I get around to it. (I’ll still make the images with iDVD though!)
Consider a cheap-ass PC.
Comment posted on 2-5-2005
Forgot to mention:
My own very unofficial benchmark puts my e-machine at 8X faster than my 800Mhz G4 iBook doing floating point math.
The OS really sucks though! =)
Comment posted on 2-6-2005
I am still really torn about this potential purchase. The Mac Mini is sweet, and will serve well for almost all the tasks I have in mind to put it to, and coupled with the 120G firewire drive i already own, I should have enough space for all my digital junk. However, I *really* miss having a Linux box around the house (I now have two at work) which would require a PC. (You can’t say "IBM compatible" anymore since IBM makes the Mac chips now
Comment posted on 2-9-2005
Back on the Linux kick for a while on this project and I found an excellent article on using Mandrake and LiRC (for remote control). I just don’t really want to be bothered building a machine and I don’t need some huge honkin monstrosity with jet engine fans spinning in my living room. If I can find an elegant way to use Linux for this that would be cool. The Mac wins in hardware hands-down. It may not be as fast, but its cooler (in both senses of the word) and whisper quiet.
Comment posted on 2-19-2005
Arrgh. After reading about the recent class action lawsuit against Apple, I decided to look around to see if that perfect, tiny x86 home server existed. I found the Shuttle! which really seems like the perfect solution. I’ll be able to have a LINE IN (which the mini lacks) as well as a TV Tuner card to allow me to use the thing as a DVR. It’s big enough to hold standard size hard drives so I can get dual, serious capacity, 7200rpm drives (no need to settle for the ‘mini’ 2.5″ drives) and yet *still* have firewire available for the firewire drive. I still have to settle on a model, and I’m looking at the video connections to see if hooking it up to the TV will be easy or not, but this really seems like the better solution right now.
Comment posted on 2-20-2005
An older article about the Shuttle 62G2 system here
Comment posted on 2-20-2005
Here’s another possible contender although it seems to be a fledgling product and not as obviously
Linux friendly as the Shuttle (that at least last year was shipping with
Mandrake
Comment posted on 2-21-2005
Great article on building a Linux PVR (using SUSE) with a Shuttle. This guy is using an ATi card which I like for Windows boxes but avoid like the plague for Linux machines. The PVR things seems a little beyond what I want to do, and since I currently have digital cable, I can’t do it anyway – no TV cards (that I know of) currently support digi cable. All I want to do, remember is play my mp3s, view my digital images, play stored mpegs (videos), and play some games while connected to the TV. The critical thing for me is going to be getting a working TV out and SPDIF sound out.
Comment posted on 12-22-2007
The original post on this was almost three years ago, and I *still* never bought anything to ’solve’ the problem of my mass of digital media. While I have a firewire drive for backups, what i really need is something to serve the purpose of NonProphet’s eMachine. I think I may have found something I will be happy with though (finally) in the Synology DS207+. Not only can I set it up with dual 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm drives, but it comes with an embedded Linux running mysql and php! That means i can actually run some of my neato php content management scripts on it and the girls will be able to store their images away and share them up to Grandma easily.