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Re: [LUG] Nice little Linux based media player device

 

On 06/11/2009 11:26, Grant Sewell wrote:
On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:39:10 +0000
Rob Beard wrote:

Michael Mortimore wrote:
On Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:56:24 -0000, Grant Sewell
<dcglug@xxxxxxxxxxxx>  wrote:
Looks interesting.  I wonder if the UI is Free, and if it is how
easy it'd be to get it running on a higher spec machine.
If you're only interested in the UI, have you looked at mythtv?
pretty spiffy pvr solution which probably can do more than the
hisense can. It supports recording tv based on schedules, playing
videos and music from any mounted drive (as long as you tell it to
look there), dvds, remotes via lirc and you can choose which
players it uses (or use the internal one).

I'd agree with that, looking at the review of the device, MythTV
looks nicer.  Or even dare I say it, Windows Media Center.
I had Mythbuntu on my media centre for a while.  To be honest, MythTV
can do a heck of a lot, but its UI is not that great and is/can be very
confusing for people more used to "main-stream" standalone applications
- ie Amarok, iTunes, etc, etc.

for the lazy option, install ubuntu then the mythbuntu-desktop
package. whether you chose ubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu or whatever,
make sure to use gdm if you want the autologin feature to work from
mythbuntu control centre (if you use kdm then you have to set it in
the system settings). if you're having the box as a dedicated media
centre, xubuntu is probably the best option since mythbuntu-desktop
makes use of xfce too.
When I get a dedicated machine this is what I'll probably do.  I've
been playing around with Windows Media Center this evening on Windows
7.  I hate to admit it, but Windows 7 and MCE is nice, very nice.  It
still did give me more grief than Ubuntu though (there is an annoying
feature in Windows 7 where by default you can't output the same audio
via digital output and analogue outputs at the same time).
Because you *might* be copying the AV through the analogue output!  God
forbid you might not have bought the latest £1000s worth of AV kit and
merely want to play your AV on the kit you *do* have... oh, no... if
you have analogue kit then you're clearly intent on copying media!

*and relax*

Grant. :D

Yep, good old Microsoft. I managed to fix it, but I'm annoyed that I had to mess about to get it working.

I've just tried the XBOX using the Windows Media Center Extender just now, my god what poor quality!

I gather it transcodes on the fly but reduces the quality of HD video to VHS quality. Time to order one of those media player devices I think.

Rob




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