Linux Media Center advice please

Non Joggler related discussion.
Post Reply
User avatar
dwl99
Posts: 765
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:38 am
Location: Glasgow

Linux Media Center advice please

Post by dwl99 »

I have a Revo R3700 nettop running Windows 7 Professional 64 bit which is used almost exclusively as a media center hooked up to my 37" Panasonic TV via HDMI. Windows 7 has been very buggy recently & the Media Center interface can be a bit laggy. Can anyone offer some advice about the best Linux-based replacement to try?

My wishlist is:

Easy & quick to set up
Easy to use for wife & kids
Supports dual-tuner USB TV stick
Sound and video via HDMI cable
Supports MCE infrared remote & receiver
Good HD video playback
Recordings can be set remotely (using Remote Potato for this at the moment)
Responsive interface

I'm not bothered if the best solution is a standalone distro similar to Roobarb's Squeezeplay OS, I don't really need the machine to do much else. So far I've had a quick read about Freevo, XBMC with TV plugins, Raspbmc and MythTV.

Thanks!
User avatar
hawsey
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 11:23 pm
Location: Northumberland

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by hawsey »

I have been running openelec (which is really xbmc) on my revo 3610 which is the model down from yours.
It boots off a sd card and has been running solid for months, it easily sees my movies /pictures/music stored on separate hard drives and I'm pretty sure the latest one supports tv cards but you would have to research that one .
The beauty of this method is you can keep windows on the revo and just take the sd card out and re boot for w7.
Xbmc can be tweaked to your liking skin size with several Waf and kid friendly ones to choose from.
Also lots of add ons like iPlayer ,4OD, 1channel etc.
Works with Mce remote out of box you can search your library dead easy for say C you press the 1 button three times just like old style texting really neat feature.
Happy Joggling
User avatar
hawsey
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 11:23 pm
Location: Northumberland

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by hawsey »

Another thought, have you tried all the usual on your revo to speed things up on W7?
You could just add xbmc as a program on W7 and it will run ok but you will have to turn off the Aero theme etc basically turn everything off apart from what you need to get it running as fast as possible.
I prefer Openelec though as then its the only thing running and not much can mess up with it then.
Happy Joggling
User avatar
dwl99
Posts: 765
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:38 am
Location: Glasgow

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by dwl99 »

hawsey wrote:Another thought, have you tried all the usual on your revo to speed things up on W7?
You could just add xbmc as a program on W7 and it will run ok but you will have to turn off the Aero theme etc basically turn everything off apart from what you need to get it running as fast as possible.
I prefer Openelec though as then its the only thing running and not much can mess up with it then.
Yes thanks, I've turned down the graphics, increased the size of the swap partition, turned off WMP sharing etc but it still isn't exactly snappy. Will try openelec off a stick as you suggest. The last time i used XBMC was on the first Xbox & I was quite impressed with it then! Is the OpenELEC 3.0 (RC 2) release stable enough for daily use?
User avatar
pete
Posts: 2950
Joined: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:33 am
Location: Time Traveler

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by pete »

I am using XBMC in a side by side test; one box running it via Wintel and another Linux. I like the Linux box better. I am using two smaller Aopen Digital engines for my testing next to the family room LCD. That said though I also have a headless box running MythTV with two tuners (OTA and Satellite) and an HDRun on the wire 3 cable tuner box. This and I do not watch much TV. The Aopen boxes also have little TV tuners inside but my preferences are to stream from the MythTV box. The HD streaming isn't much of an issue with the two boxes; but I do see errors pop up with the Wintel box.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

Auto mater
User avatar
Leonardo
Posts: 146
Joined: Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:51 pm

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by Leonardo »

I can suggest, like other people here, XBMC, if you want to invest few money you can buy the Raspberry PI and use Raspbmc, it works very well and you can drive it with your TV remote through HDMI. You don't have to be worried about power consumption and you connect to the RPI a USB hard disk with all media!
User avatar
dwl99
Posts: 765
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:38 am
Location: Glasgow

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by dwl99 »

I now have openELEC running from a USB stick & it looks very nice so far. The wifi was a bit of a struggle to get going and now the next hard bit will be configuring the TV tuner and frontend. Why do these things never go smoothly???
User avatar
pete
Posts: 2950
Joined: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:33 am
Location: Time Traveler

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by pete »

The TV tuner stuff is probably the most difficult to configure. IE: every tuner seems to have its own drivers. Such that the MythTV box is running with 3 sets of drivers for 5 tuners. That is doing this concurrently with XBMC makes the box work harder. Dedicating the MM XBMC box to just a head end box works better for me.

I think that what happened is the MS is crippling the multimedia stuff with too much "fluff". They have removed media center in windows 8. Very similiar to the now current windows home media servers having actually less functionality than the first home windows media server. With the big brother windows server now everything is a la carte where as the old windows server came with some decent functionality. Pretty soon you will just be renting the OS from Microsoft and running it from the cloud on a monthly rental charge and still have to pay for the a la cart pieces. I am not knocking MS for this; they have to make money you know.

I am currently using a BCM mITX board for the MythTV back end stuff. I actually purchased these new at a great deal (bought 4 of these motherboards). The plans are to use a Rasberry Pi for the kitchen LCD that is mounted flush to the wall. I still don't know how long it will last where its mounted. I put it a chair height and have noticed with company visiting and moving chairs the LCD has almost been smashed a few times with a moving chair. I should have mounted it higher up on the wall.
The Digital Engines came from some composite video display/digital signage advertising company. These are commercial and in plan metal boxes with no fancy graphics. All metal and no plastic though. Very small fooprint. I am using these for my HD touchscreens. They work well. Another bulk deal. These came though with an embedded OS on a SATA drive. Little miniature marvels.

http://usa.aopen.com/Platforms.aspx?id=78
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

Auto mater
gegs
Posts: 1146
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:22 pm
Location: Edinburgh

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by gegs »

Leonardo wrote:I can suggest, like other people here, XBMC, if you want to invest few money you can buy the Raspberry PI and use Raspbmc, it works very well and you can drive it with your TV remote through HDMI. You don't have to be worried about power consumption and you connect to the RPI a USB hard disk with all media!
Be aware that your TV needs to support HDMI-CEC to be able to use the TV remote as a controller for XBMC on the Pi. Sadly, mine doesn't (although I can control it with Yatse on my Android phone or the XBMC official remote on the iPad).

HDMI-CEC is usually described by a proprietary name such as "Bravia Link" or "Viera Link" but it is actually a common HDMI standard. Usually the manual will say that with "Viera Link", for example, you can use your controller to operate other Panasonic devices, whereas the truth is that you should also be able to control devices from other manufacturers too (if they are CEC compliant).

CEC usually needs to be enabled on each device's "settings" menu.

Also, with regard to Leonardo's comment about a USB hard disk connected to the Raspberry Pi, it does not have enough power to run a portable drive from its USB sockets; any USB drive connected to the Pi should be powered.
User avatar
dwl99
Posts: 765
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 7:38 am
Location: Glasgow

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by dwl99 »

Thanks for the advice everyone. Raspberry Pi looks very interesting, I don't think I'll be able to avoid getting one :-)

I now have my Revo R3700 dual booting to Win7Pro and OpenELEC 2.99.2, both installed to the HDD. It wasn't exactly straightforward - I needed to get rid of the Win7 system boot partition and fiddle about with the extlinux bootloader so if anyone needs any pointers just let me know!
User avatar
Leonardo
Posts: 146
Joined: Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:51 pm

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by Leonardo »

gegs wrote: Be aware that your TV needs to support HDMI-CEC to be able to use the TV remote as a controller for XBMC on the Pi. Sadly, mine doesn't (although I can control it with Yatse on my Android phone or the XBMC official remote on the iPad).
Didn't know this, I have a quite old TV it's a Samsung serie 5 don't remember the precise model but it is 5 years old at the least!
User avatar
hawsey
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 11:23 pm
Location: Northumberland

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by hawsey »

Don't think it will work m8 I have an older Sammy too and the CEC shows up from the PI but won't work anyway I try :(
Happy Joggling
gegs
Posts: 1146
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2011 3:22 pm
Location: Edinburgh

Re: Linux Media Center advice please

Post by gegs »

Leonardo wrote:
gegs wrote: Be aware that your TV needs to support HDMI-CEC to be able to use the TV remote as a controller for XBMC on the Pi. Sadly, mine doesn't (although I can control it with Yatse on my Android phone or the XBMC official remote on the iPad).
Didn't know this, I have a quite old TV it's a Samsung serie 5 don't remember the precise model but it is 5 years old at the least!
HDMI-CEC has been around as a standard, although evolving, since HDMI 1.1 but it relies on CEC circuitry in the connected devices and firmware to activate it. My Panasonic TV control will work with my Philips Blu-Ray but not my Philips PVR. CEC connectivity was promised in a future firmware upgrade in my PVR manual (so the circuitry must be present) but it has never happened.
Post Reply