I was surfing the net years ago looking for a fun project cause I was bored and I ran across XBMC. It was an amazing piece of software that played any type of media that you threw at it and was very customizable. All you needed was an original XBOX console, MechAssault, The Action Replay kit and 3 hours to kill. When I was done I fell in love with XBMC. It was all roses till my CD Rom failed on my XBOX and was banished to the closet.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago where I found an article on XBMC on one of my favorite sites Lifehacker.com! They had an article on how to turn an ACER REVO into a standalone media center. This brought back the memories of all the fun I had with my now banished XBOX. For those of you who don’t know about the Acer Revo Let me bring you up to speed. It is a very small net top pc with an Atom processor and the NVIDIA ION chip with 1 gig of ram. Now that isn’t much these days but it is good enough to surf the net and do light email normally but the ION turns this little box into a beast! It can play back HD video at 1080P via HDMI!!! That was the nail in the coffin. I went out and picked one up for $179 which is a crack head price for a fully functional pc. It comes with windows XP and a bunch of other software. I plugged every thing in and hooked it up to my flat screen via HDMI and I was up and running in no time. XP runs very slow on this box due to the lack of processing power form the Atom chip. Plus you need to have run antivirus and all that other junk to keep your pc safe so it ran like molasses in the winter. That is just unacceptable for me so I loaded up the new version of Ubuntu the Karmic Koala and never looked back. It runs a little slow but is 5 times faster than XP on the same box.

You might say “how did we get on Ubuntu you were telling me about XBMC”! Well XBMC can run under Ubuntu which makes this little box even more valuable because now it doubles as a light weight PC and media center. Here a couple of things this little box can do.

1. Play back almost any video you throw at it.
2. Play back HD at 1080P
3. Play your music collection
4. Stream to you PS3 or any appliance that supports DLNA
5. It goes out and gets cover art for everything (Movies, TV shows and Music)
6. Supports plug-ins that stream sites like PBS an Comedy Central

That is just a little sampling of what it can do. XBMC is awesome that is all there is too it. I will be posting a how to so you can try it out your self. I forgot to mention how quite this thing is. Once you set it up you won’t even know it is there. Check back soon for the build out. I also plan to do a how to for Ubuntu so you know how to set it up correctly.

After a lengthy, ongoing, personal mission to find the perfect Media Centre software (or hardware-based) solution, I have come to one conclusion – there is not such a thing out there!

Those of you reading this, familiar with the current offerings of Media Centre software and hardware, will likely be thinking that the popular ones are great.

Yes, I will admit, some of them show great potential and are very close to what I would consider “complete”. But not one of them fulfill all the (very simple) requirements.

These requirements are not difficult, or awkward, as each one is implemented somewhere in at least one of the solutions out there. And I say this from a completely non-developer view. I do not feel out of place taking this view, as the examples of what to do are out there.

Enough waffle, what am I talking about?

A Media Centre should tick a few boxes to be considered a proper, complete solution;

It has to be simple to use
No one wants to spend more time ‘tweaking’ their set up than they do enjoying it.

It needs to perform it’s functions with out any frequent bugs
There should be no excuses now for releases to be riddled with a list of irritating show-stoppers, especially if they require work-arounds from the user for something which was once simple. Where I work, we have test documentation we follow relentlessly after every new patch or release of software. This ensures that things which have been fixed in the past remain working after we fix something else. All these new releases with major bugs that are found after just 5 minutes of standard use is not on – there is just no excuse.

It should be customizable
I’m not talking about in-depth, code level tweaking here. Just simple GUI options, allowing the user to switch on or off certain aspects they don’t agree with. Like whether or not to see the year a film was released next to the name, or which order to list TV Shows.

It has to have the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor)
Nothing can ruin the feel of a Media Centre than the words of your partner complaining how difficult it is to navigate and asking why they can’t just put a disc in.

So where do the current offerings fall short?

Plex/XBMC
Technically Plex and XBMC are different apps. But Plex is based off the same code as XBMC, just refined to be Mac-only. The two are pretty much the same thing.

They offer wonderful eye candy and customization in the way of skins. Plex and XBMC do look absolutely stunning once they are set up.

But the developers are so busy increasing the level of wonderment to the eyes that the underlying functionality of the would-be perfect software is falling behind.

Adding Music and Photos to the Library is a breeze – the application reads the tags and adds the info to the library. (I’m pretty sure it could read more info from JPEG EXIF data, but there is enough there just now).

The level of plug-ins available is amazing too. If there is a web based service you use frequently, chances are there is a 10-foot interface version available for Plex/XBMC.

Video, however, is where they fail miserably. If you name your movie files or DVD rips correctly, the apps can ’scrape’ the information from sites such as IMDB. But this does not always work as expected, far too often odd movies having the wrong info associated (it grabs information for D.A.R.Y.L. as “Droids”) or even nothing at all. And adding this info manually is a pain itself, with you having to add data to propriety xml-based ‘nfo’ files and separate image files renamed ‘*.tbn’ for the artwork/covers. Not something that can be migrated easily should you wish to change software.

Why do they refuse to add simple tag-reading to the movie part of the library?  One word – Piracy!

It’s so simple now to download files of the latest movies from torrent sites. They are usually in the archaic AVI container, encoded with the old, hacked, Xvid or Divx codec. This format is kept alive by bell ends such as the infamous “aXXo”.

Even DVD player manufacturers know the powerful pull of free movies in naff low-resolution quality. It’s hard to find a DVD player now without “MP4 video” support. They know full well that folk now have huge collections of avi files they want to plug in via Hard Drive or USB Stick. I mean, come on, how many legitimate companies out there actually offer services that would warrant support for these pirate-based format? Practically none! It’s not even “MP4 support” as they so freely term it – It’s support for Xvid and Divx in the AVI container.

The introduction of the open MKV container for HD video is thankfully eating away at the nasty AVI files, but even this is a complete mess due to lack of standards – you tend to find people encoding with it in a do-what-you-feel-like fashion.

Those like me, who like to encode their movie collection in proper standard formats, are stuck putting up with the above until the developers pull their fingers out.

We take pride in being able to add all the movie information you would ever need to the files themselves – Title, Directors, Cast, Release Date, lovely clean hi-res artwork, etc. etc. Information that stays with the file, like with mp3s and jpegs, no matter where you decide to use it.

Apple’s Front Row
This is simplicity in its finest. Well, almost.

Front Row is able to read all the information it needs from the files you import into it (via iTunes). There’s no need to worry about crap data from less-than-complete sites and horrible looking artwork. If you have taken the time to encode the file yourself and added all the relevant info, you are rewarded with a nice, clean collection.

But it falls short because of Apple’s apparent shunning of this software – the sorting of your library is messed up and can become tedious to try and ignore.

Movies have no options to browse by Date, Genre, Director, Actor, etc. All the info is there, and you can browse them in iTunes really easily, but in Front Row you’re presented with one gargantuan list. But this list is ordered via the “Sort Name” tag though which is a godsend (you’re able to order collections such as the Alien films in the proper order, instead of by name only).

The TV shows suffer a similar fate – multiple seasons are ordered one after the other, listed by Show Name only. For example, 3 Seasons of Dexter and 8 Seasons of Red Dwarf would be listed as follows…

Dexter
Dexter
Dexter
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf

…Where you find the episodes listed in reverse order (newest on top).

Another example of the poor sorting

You would expect the TV Shows to be listed as Show Name > Season Number > Episode ordered by oldest on top.

Windows 7 Media Centre
As much as I hate to say it (I’m a bit of a Mac fan-boy), Windows Media Centre is almost my favourite.

Windows 7 can read the data in the mp4 videos perfectly. Even allowing you to edit the tags (or ‘atoms’ as they’re officially known) from within Windows Explorer itself. More than Mac OS X allows.

But in some monumentally stupid move, the Media Centre side of things insists on pulling the data down from the web too! For the love of all that is Holy, WHY?! The data is there, you can read it fine! Aaargh!

It does integrate brilliantly with TV Tuners though.

The other Apps out there are very similar, so I won’t go in to every one. Plex, XBMC, Windows 7 Media Centre and Front row are the best I’ve seen.

What about purely Hardware based solutions?

There are quite a few offerings out there. The main two being The Popcorn Hour and The Western Digital TV Live.

They both offer almost the same functionality – play-anything codec support in a small form factor, with the Popcorn Hour giving the option of an optical drive.

But even these feel half-baked and rushed out. If you search online for bug lists of such devices, you will likely find forum posts dedicated to users listing the short-comings of these cheap and seemingly simple devices. I had to send back my original WD TV back due to irritations with playing back simple DVD rips (it would read the aspect ratio incorrectly, displaying the movies in the wrong shape).

Their interfaces are usually very sluggish too; with the low power processors unable to offer any smooth navigation to anything above simple text-based file lists.

No Media Centre is worth anything if no one can use it but you. You need to have something your partner, family and friends can pick up and navigate too. Otherwise you might as well hook your PC up to your TV screen and navigate the files with a keyboard and mouse.

So what needs to be done?

A few very very simple things need to happen to get the current state of offerings out of the depressing half-arsed Media Centre scenario:

Plex, XBMC, Moovida, Boxee, Media Portal and the rest of the ‘Open’ Software solutions need to stop dicking about with adding more eye candy and fix the Library functions.
No one cares if they’ve added the option to see the bit rate of the current playing song, or made the star rating from IMDB look better – if the bit rate of a song is bad, it’s not in my library. And I couldn’t give a monkey’s fart what rating the movies in my collection get on IMDB! Get a clue and import the tags from my standard, non propriety, MP4 files!

If they implement this, they will have a truly perfect Media Centre (the TV Tuner side of things can be handled via launching a different app from within).

Apple need to fix the current bugs in Front Row.
It was working before with the older versions. The interface of Front Row to me is perfect – a nice, snappy, clean, simple system. If they fix the simple sorting bug I believe a lot of people would drop Plex and XBMC (those that can do without the plug-ins). You can even get apps that will scrape the data for your *cough* downloaded collection and add it to iTunes.

I also feel Apple needs to stick to their guns more about abiding by the standards that they’re promoting. As far as I’m concerned (and I speak for the majority here), mp4 is the current standard to replace the ageing format of DVD. h.264 is already the way to go as far as the video codec is concerned. It’s scaleable, meaning it can be used for anything from small mobile phone sized videos right up to full 1080p video and beyond (it’s used for Blu-ray). And the multi channel AAC format for audio is perfect for replacing 6 channel 5.1 AC3 (Dolby Digital). Match that up with an embedded text file for chapter markers all wrapped up in the MP4 container and you have the perfect 21st century format for movies.

VOB container -> MP4
MPEG-2 video codec -> h.264
Multi channel AC3 -> AAC
Chapter markers -> nameable chapter text file

All of that results in a smaller format, practically indistinguishable from the original, and able to hold all the metadata you could need.

The problem is, there are no Amp manufacturers currently supporting decoding for a multi channel AAC bitstream, you have to feed them something they can understand. The most obvious is AC3.

Plex already does this by transcoding multi channel AAC into AC3 on the fly. This is perfect as you have a standard format to store your movies in. But, Apple seem reluctant to fork out for Dolby Live licences, leaving any multi channel AAC sound being down converted to a PLII Stereo signal at best.

All that is needed is for them to allow the Apple TV, Quicktime, Front Row and even the iPhone and iPods to accept multi channel AAC and either convert it to AC3 for current amps (as Plex does) or, with regards to the iPods, down convert it to a stereo source.

Because they are dragging their heels over this, we’re forced to create a file with two audio tracks – one as a PLII mix of the original AC3 track and the second as a pass-through of the AC3 track. This breaks the mp4 container standard and leaves you with a file, although more compatible with current devices, larger than it needs to be. It’s also has the extension “.m4v” making it feel more like another propriety format.

*sigh*

I feel so strongly about this as I honestly cannot find a single bit of kit worth writing a glowing report about and yet I believe it’s not something that should be this hard to find. I have used all of the well known apps, and read enough forums about the hardware based Media Centres to know that I’ll still be searching for a while yet.

You show me a Media Centre and I’ll show you where it falls short…

Hace un par de meses escribía un post sobre Telebision. Se trata de un centro multimedia cuya característica más notable es su sistema de complementos que permite disfrutar de muchos contenidos en español: seriesyonkis, cinetube, etc.

La novedad es que anunciaban una versión para Linux y han cumplido … más o menos. En realidad, han sacado una versión para Ubuntu.

La instalación es muy sencilla y la explican con todo detalle: Instalación de telebision

Lo he probado y tengo que decir que, de momento, sólo es apta para los más experimentadores. Sin embargo, me da buena impresión y como tengo los repositorios instalados, voy a estar atento a las actualizaciones.

Me gusta porque funciona fluido en mi portátil de 3 años. De hecho, va mucho más rápido que la versión de Windows. El problema es que un tanto inestable, se cuelga de vez en cuando.

Otro aspecto a mejorar es la selección de carpetas para agregar contenidos: Me parece un tanto caótico para un usuario medio.

En definitiva, como decía, voy a hacer seguimiento a este programa. Puliendo algunos detalles puede ser muy bueno. Además me gusta la web de los desarrolladores: Contiene muchas explicaciones y muy sencillas para los usuarios

telebision, ubuntu, series on line, television on line, peliculas on line, centro multimedia

Ni har väl inte missat att voddler har börjat släppa invites?

http://voddler.bredbandsbolaget.se/

Allt ni behöver är en webcam, lite fantasi och lite hjälp från era vänner. Vips har ni voddler invite och kan börja se lite film via stream.

Voddler är som Spotify fast för film, dvs ni loggar in på ett program och via det programmet ser ni på film. I dagsläget finns det inte så många filmer, men så är Voddler inte klart för lansering heller. Programmet är i BETA fasen fortfarande och kan bugga lite fortfarande, personligen har jag fått låna ett konto för att testa och jag är ganska imponerad ändå med tanke på att det är ett lagligt alternativ att se på film via datorn.

Kvalitén på filmerna är i DVD upplösning, de har svensk text och enligt programmet skall det även streamas 5.1 ljud (dvs om man nu får tro på interfacet.) Voddler är en tjänst från Bredbandsbolaget och har skrivit kontrakt med ett flertal bolag redan, bla Disney och några andra av de stora kartellerna i Hollywood.

Själva interfacet i sig är baserat helt på ett skin till det populära XBMC som är en given produkt för många HTPC ägare idag. Jag misstänker dock och hoppas att det kommer att designas fram ett nytt “Voddler skin” som är helt anpassat till programmet, men interfacet är lätt och smidigt att navigera sig runt i. Man använder keyboarden enbart och det glömde jag bort första gången jag testade det, men efter lite läsning på deras hemsida (www.voddler.com), något jag borde ha gjort först och innan jag provade programmet, så löste det sig ganska snabbt, hehe.

Av de filmer som finns där idag så kan jag direkt rekommendera filmen “Shutter”, en asiatisk skräck/thriller som är mer än godkänd.

Se även:

Film via Stream

Testa ett lagligt alternativ

Voddler, som Spotify fast för film

Voddler invites

Gestern habe ich es nun endlich geschafft. Ich kann ganz ohne zusätzliche Kosten, Software oder Geräte öffentlich rechtliches Fernsehen schauen. Und das an jedem PC/Abspielgerät das in meinem LAN ist und RTP-Streams wiedergeben kann.

Motivation/Hintergrund

Seit Längerem wohne ich nun alleine und habe seit dieser Zeit kein Fernsehen mehr zur Verfügung. Eigentlich bin ich damit gut zurechtgekommen, doch die ein oder andere Sendung möchte man doch mal sehen. Sei es zum Einschlafen oder weil der ganze Flash-Quatsch in der Mediathek von ARD/ZDF zu träge ist (Neues aus der Anstalt).

Zuerst startete ich einen Versuch mit einer DVB-C TV-Karte von Terratec. Leider ohne Erfolg. Der Kabelanschluss in meiner Wohnung ist unbenutzbar für Digital-Fernsehen. Es kommt kein brauchbares Signal an. Zynisch, dass UnityMedia immer wieder meinen Briefkasten mit Werbeflyern für superschnelles Internet über Kabel zuballert. Es geht ja nicht einmal das eigentliche Produkt TV.

Mein Glück, wie sich herausstellen sollte, dass ich einen Alice Fun Tarif mein Eigen nennen darf. Als ich im Alice Kundencenter meinen Vertrag begutachtete (im Zuge einer Vertragsumstellung) entdeckte ich unter “Mein Produkt” den Punkt “Aktivierte Optionen: DVB-IP    (bereits aktiviert)”.

Anhängig war ein PDF welches doch sehr technisch (ich konnte immerhin schon mal was mit ATM und soweiter anfangen) nahelegte wie man seinen Anschluss für die Nutzung von IPTV zu konfigurieren hat.

Wie sich herausstellte haben verschiedene deutsche Provider wohl Multicast-Server die öffentlich rechtliche TV-Sender (und gegen Kosten auch Private) ihren Kunden zur Verfügung stehen. Diese Server befinden sich im für Multicast-Adressen reservierten Bereich von 224.0.0.0 bis 239.255.255.255.

Erstaunlicherweise bietet auch die ARD auf ihrer Website ard-digital.de/iptv eine kurze Einführung in das Thema und stellt hier Playlists für Alice- und T-Home-Kunden bereit.

Nur wie das Ganze umsetzen. Nirgends gab es Tutorials die mir das Thema ordentlich erschlossen haben. So etwas selbst herumprobiert und Forenbeiträge gelesen. Aber schlussendlich hat es geklappt und läuft nun wirklich flüssig. Wenn auch bisher nur mit VLC. XBMC macht unter Ubuntu 9.04 noch Probleme (starke Schlieren).

Voraussetzungen

• Siemens C-010-i Modem (mein Standard-Modem von Alice)
• Player der RTP-Streams abspielt (VLC, MPlayer)
• DSL-Leitung ab ca. 5000kBit/s
• Playlist der ARD-Streams

Durchführung

Das Modem erreicht man über:

IP: 192.168.1.1

Benutzername: alice@13184

Passwort: hnto$mgmt@lice

Nun wird das Modem als Router umkonfiguriert. Das heißt unter Advanced -> ATM VCC erstmal alle Verbindungen löschen. Anschließend werden zwei neue Verbindungen eingerichtet. Die erste auf PVC-0 ist für die normale DSL-Verbindung, die zweite baut einen zusätzlichen ATM-Kanal zum Alice-IPTV-Netz auf.

Erste Verbindung

PVC-0

VPI: 1

VCI: 32

Virtual Circuit: Enabled

WAN Setting: PPPoE/PPPoA

Username: Einwahlnummer

Password: beliebig

Connection Type: PPPoE LLC

MRU: 1492

Authentication: CHAP

Obtain DNS Automatically: Enabled

Default Route: Enabled

NAT: Enabled

IGMP: Enabled

Zweite Verbindung

PVC-1

VPI: 1

VCI: 34

Virtual Circuit: Enabled

WAN Setting: Bridge Mode

Connection Type: 1483 Bridged IP LLC

Jeweils die Einrichtung mit Apply bestätigen und danach den nun erschaffenen Router neu starten. Nun sollte alles funktionieren. Also einfach die Playlist öffnen und glücklich sein.

Als zusätzliche Einstellungen empfiehlt es sich die Firewall zu aktivieren da das ehemalige Modem nun die Einwahl übernimmt und kein anderer Router mehr dazwischen geschalten werden muss.

Ich habe das ganze mit einer etwas neueren Firmware als der ausgelieferten durchgeführt. Sollte aber auch mit der Standardfirmware funktionieren. Falls es doch zu Problemen kommt bitte ich um Feedback.

Anschließend habe ich noch den eingebauten DHCP-Server aktiviert und sogar DYNDNS lässt sich mit Modifikationen der config-Datei möglich sein.

Ist der TV-Stream verzerrt empfiehlt sich das Aktivieren von Deinterlacing.

– david

Het is weer even geleden maar dan nu toch nog een vervolg op het mediacenterblogje.

Wat is nu precies een mediacenter/HTPC? Kijk hier voor de uitgebreide uitleg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_theater_PC. Maar in het kort is een HTPC een Home Theather PC. Een pc dus met speciale software en hardware voor je thuisbioscoop. In mijn geval is de basis een 40” LCD tv. Als je van plan bent zo’n HTPC te bouwen/kopen dan moet je eerst op een rijtje zetten wat je er allemaal mee wil doen.Ik wilde om te beginnen een mooie kast. Volgers van mijn blog weten dat ik een apart kantoortje/computerkamer heb gemaakt dan ga je dus niet weer een pc midden in je kamer zetten om films te kunnen kijken op je TV.

Ik kwam uit op deze kast. Het is een Antec kast met afstandsbediening en display. Aangezien er een pc in zit kun je die display zo programmeren als je wil. (extra voordeeltje) Het voordeel van een afstandsbediening moge duidelijk zijn maar het is wel raar om Windows Vista te besturen met je afstandsbediening. De kast past precies in mijn tv meubel en ziet er uit als een dikke dvd speler

Dan de inhoud. Het moederbord moest een HDMI aansluiting hebben inclusief audio. Ik had geen zin om apart met audio te gaan rommelen. Natuurlijk een flinke harddisk van 1 TB en een beetje geheugen van 2 GB. Meer geheugen is echt niet nodig, de meeste belasting zit bij de processor en de geheugenkaart. Over de geheugenkaart gesproken. Dit hoeft echt niet de beste van de beste te zijn. Er worden geen games op gespeeld en voor HD is een gangbare kaart voldoende. Tot slot wou ik er nog een TV kaartje in hebben. Wel zo handig aangezien ik mijn oude  VHS videorecorder het raam uit wil gooien. Wat een bagger kwaliteit, hoe heb ik daar al die jaren naar kunnen kijken.

Dat was zo’n beetje de hardware. De volgende keer een blogje over de software en dan met name Windows mediacenter en XBMC.

Hier even een voorproefje:

XBMC (XBox Media Center)

Xbox Media Center (abbreviato con XBMC) è un programma open source (precisamente un completissimo media center) nato per la console Xbox ed oggi disponibile per Mac, Windows, Linux, AppleTV e Xbox.

L’Xbox Media Center può essere utilizzato per riprodurre la maggior parte dei formati multimediali Video, Audio e Immagine.

XBMC riproduce tutti i file multimediali direttamente dai CD/DVD inseriti nel lettore DVD incluso, dall’Hard-Disk, oppure attraverso la lettura di una cartella o di una partizione di Windows condivisa attraverso il sistema Samba (SMB), o via iTunes attraverso il protocollo di trasmissione DAAP.

XBMC utilizza la porta ethernet e l’eventuale accesso ad Internet; se XBMC rileva il collegamento a Internet, diventa possibile richiedere al database IMDb copertine e recensioni di film, al DataBase CDDB i titoli delle tracce di CD audio, la riproduzione di video in streaming e l’ascolto di qualsiasi radio online.

XBMC supporta come plug-in gli script Python, in modo che gli utenti possano aggiungere funzionalità.

XBMC è altamente personalizzabile attraverso Skin, scaricabili dal sito ufficiale.

Screenshots:

Video:

Links:

HomePage XBMC

XBMC Remote: iPhone come Telecomando

Gebannt habe ich auf die Veröffentlichung von Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10 gewartet. Seit Längerem stand für mich eigentlich fest, dass ich mit dieser Version meine beiden Systeme, Desktop und Laptop auf 64bit umstellen werde.

Ein Upgrade kam eben aus diesem Grund (alte Systeme 32 bit) und der Umstellung auf ext4 bzw grub2 nicht in Frage.

Zum Download der verschiedenen Bit-Torrent-Files hier.

Zuerst ist der Laptop dran, was sich im nachhinein als kluge Wahl bestätigt hat.

Vorbereitungen

Wegen der Umstellung auf grub2 Partitionstabelle und den mbr im Gesamten gesichert:
Partitionstabelle mithilfe von dd:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=bootloader_sicherung bs=446 count=1

Anschließend noch eine Sicherung des mbr:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr_sicherung bs=512 count=1

Sämtliche Daten werden mit Hilfe von Unison synchron auf beiden Rechnern vorgehalten.
Das Homeverzeichnis und weitere Einstellungen lagen mit sBackup gesichert ebenfalls auf dem Desktop-PC.

Installation

Mein Eindruck war, es dauert länger als bei 9.04 und vor Allem mit weniger Hintergrundinformationen. Die Möglichkeiten der Partitionierung kamen mir hingegen umfangreicher vor.

Ohne Probleme startete das System nach abgeschlossener Installation. Die Windows 7 Installation erkannt und eingetragen. Gut.

Rücksicherung mit sBackup
Das erste Mal kam ich in die Lage ein sBackup rücksichern zu müssen. Und ich dachte schon die Backups wären einfach alle
defekt. Aber die Rücksicherung dauert selbst für kleine Dateien einfach ewig. Dies mag wohl an meinen 8GB großen Backups liegen.
Aber nach langer Wartezeit hat dann doch alles geklappt. Nun werde ich mich wohl nach einem anderen Backupprogramm umschauen. Bei sBackup sind nämlich auch keine Rücksicherung mehrerer Ordner der gleichen Hierarchiestufe auf einmal möglich.

Einige Anwendungen, ihre Installation und Tücken

Adobe und 64bit

Adobe-Anwendungen wie Air, Reader und Flash liegen bisher nur als 32bit-Versionen vor.

Die Installation selbst ging mit sudo dpkg –force-architecture -i <deb-paketname> von statten.

Flash läuft erstaunlicherweise echt gut. Sogar der Fullscreen-Mode läuft erstmals ruckelfrei. Einziges Manko in Zusammenspiel mit Opera: Manchmal reagiert der Flash-Player nicht auf Eingaben. Aber bisher keine Abstürze mehr durch Flash. Endlich.

Auch der Reader ist gefühlt um Einiges schneller geworden. Fast wie unter Windows.

Twhirl (Adobe-Air-App)

Ließ sich ohne Probleme installieren allerdings lassen sich Dialoge nicht bestätigen, was die Konfiguration erschwert und die Verbindung mit einem bit.ly-Account unmöglich macht.

XBMC (Media-Center)

XBMC liegt im Moment noch nicht in einer 64bit Version vor und so wie ich es verstanden habe raten die XBMC-Entwickler auch noch nicht zu einem Upgrade auf Karmic. Eventuell könnte man sich XBMC auch selbst kompilieren. Dazu fehlt mir im Moment die Lust. Mein Mediacenter (Desktop-PC) bleibt deshalb erstmal auf Jaunty.

Instant-Messenger Empathy

Nach kurzem Ausprobieren gleich wieder deinstalliert. Für mich nichts weiter als ein Rückschritt. Kaum Einstellmöglichkeiten vorhanden, es ist nicht möglich Notification-Klänge selbst zu definieren. Auch ein Plugin für OTR-Encryption habe ich nicht entdeckt. Also bitte. Ich bin Miranda-verwöhnt. Mir da sowas vorzusetzen. Ich bin enttäuscht!!

Deshalb benutze ich nun auch wieder Pidgin. Hier wurde der Funktionsumfang, zumindest subjektiv, erweitert. Zufriedenstellend.

Opera

Opera liegt als x64-Paket vor. Läuft gut, keine weiteren Anmerkungen

Gnome-Do

Hat beim Systemstart extreme Schwierigkeiten. Prozessorlast um die 90 Prozent. Reagiert nicht auf Eingaben und zeigt dann bei den ersten Aufrufen immer noch die eigentlich ausgeblendeten Bereiche an (Wers von KDE kennt weiß von was ich rede, der Rest hat Glück).
Nach ein paar Minuten läufts dann rund. Allerdings sind immernoch regelmäßige stille Abstürze zu verzeichnen. Warum auch immer.

Evolution

Nach dem Start sofort eine Backup-Rücksicherung angeboten. So muss das sein.

Notification System

Die Notifications werden nun etwas weiter eingerückt eingeblendet und sind auch kompakter gehalten. Nur leider ist der redesignte Briefumschläg gänzlich überflüssig. Kaum Unterschiede zwischen “ungelesene Nachrichten” und Normalzustand. Bitte ändern.

Prism

Ich benutze Prism seit einiger Zeit für sämtliche Google-Apps, vor allem für Docs, Reader und Mail. Dieser crasht nun regelmäßig ohne erkennbaren Grund.

Fazit nach über einer Woche Betrieb: Hoffe also auf Nachbesserung und werde vermutlich erstmal wieder auf 32bit wechseln.

Nachtrag: Mittlerweile liegt auch eine Alpha von XBMC für Karmic vor.

Reasoning

This blog is my attempt to keep an open journal on my adventure in revamping my ageing MythTV-based Home Theatre PC.  I plan to explain and track how I setup my new system here and perhaps turn it into a howto when complete.  Plus, this will keep me honest and perhaps I’ll bring this project to completion instead of leave it in a “good enough” state.

Background

I first setup a MythTV system based on the Gentoo Linux distribution about six years ago.  I named it Telly; so imaginative. That was when I had a cable TV feed in an attempt to only watch what I wanted to, rather than drown in the endless supply of craptacular shows that were shown when I decided to unwind after a long day’s work. It was great while it lasted, but I found myself using MythVideo more than any of the other features since I would rip and transcode a DVD that I’d rent to keep a copy for myself to watch later.  My system then began to morph into my personal webserver/svn server/file server and now forms the backbone of my home network.  It was natural since it was always running, and I had spent the time to make it very quiet and unobtrusive, sitting in my component stereo system stack.  Unfortunately, the machine is showing its age by not being able to nicely display hidef video and I have let its maintenance go, so at this point it isn’t easy to add or change software packages on it.  Besides, the motherboard’s CMOS battery seems to have died and it loses all the BIOS settings after a power outage (the only time the system is rebooted rather forcefully).  I’ve had average uptimes of 6 months.

After looking at a Sabayon LiveCD which had an XBMC standalone boot option I was inspired. I’ve always been a little annoyed with Myth’s UI and its foibles and I was aware that XBMC was great, but it only ran on an XBox game console back then. In the meantime, they’ve ported it to Linux and other OSes and I finally took it for a little spin. It has an awesome interface, and I can setup a MythTV backend to handle recording TV shows and stream them from the XBMC frontend – it is pretty extensible. I need new hardware to drive this system!

Previously I was using a VGA to component adapter (Audio Authority 9A60) which worked well, but was a royal pain to setup since I needed to figure out the video timings of my TV to get this to work.  Now that video cards support HDMI in Linux, I can plug that directly into the TV and it should Just Work, with a better picture.  If not, then perhaps I can justify buying a nice, shiny new LCD display.  I love new tech projects!  (when I have the cash, that is)

I’ll also use a more powerful  CPU.  I was using a lowly AMD AthlonXP 2800 which was fine for my needs six years ago.  I intend to use hardware accelerated video decoding, but that can’t handle any HD Flash video (yet) and I want to quickly transcode files while watching something as well. The newer CPUs have better power management features which I’ll take advantage of too.

Planned Hardware

The new system that I’m going to configure is going to be a mix of the old and the new.  I will reuse the old case, a big IDE harddrive, and one of my TV encoders.  Everything else will be new components.

Case
CoolerMaster ATC-600: My old case, which I think looks great and has 4 3.5″ drive bays and fits a microATX motherboard.  Aluminium faceplate with a retro swing-down access door and USB and firewire ports on the front.  I have an aluminium drive faceplate system which completes the look to cover up the cheap plastic DVD drive.  I had previously lined the top cover and sides with car speaker sound-proofing material to minimize any fan noise.  Fits nicely into a full-size component stereo stack.

TV Capture Card
Hauppage WinTV PVR-500: PCI card provides two TV tuners and encodes video and audio in hardware to MPEG2. Great quality and very tweakable in Linux. FM tuner included, if you want to go nuts.

Hard Drives
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10: 500 GB IDE drive from the old system. Very quiet and is very dependable.
Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS: New 1.5 TB SATA drive. Quiet, power efficient drive. Not the fastest, but we don’t need that performance.

Motherboard
Intel BOXDG43GT: I can’t find much information about this mainboard on the web so this is a bit of a gamble, but it is an Intel product which usually work very well under Linux. It has a quality Intel gigabit NIC, onboard video which I won’t use, and a new audio chipset by RealTek (ALC888S) which seems to be supported by ALSA with optical digital out that I’ll use.  I chose this mainboard because it was the only one that I could find on NewEgg at the time that supported all of the peripherals that I wanted to use while providing a bit of an upgrade path, if need be.  Now I can ditch using my Audigy PCI card for digital sound.

CPU and Cooler
Intel Pentium E6300 DualCore: Intel is getting very confusing with their naming schemes of late.  This CPU has plenty of power while still being relatively light on the electricity.  Although I am going for a system that has as much of the video processing offloaded onto hardware, there is still Hulu and Flash video to decode.  I also use this system as my core computer of my home network so it is important that it can handle anything that I throw at it. I was tempted to go for a Core2 Duo, but that isn’t worth the extra dollars for an extra MB of cache. Otherwise this CPU is pretty similar to that. I don’t intend to overclock the CPU, which would push up the heat levels.

Noctua NH-U9B 92mm SSO CPU Cooler: I need silence since this machine sits in my livingroom all day so the stock heatsink and fan won’t do. I needed to be choosy with a replacement since there isn’t much headroom in my case and the mainboard’s northbridge (onboard video) heatsink is quite big and close to the CPU socket. I chose this badboy because of its dimensions, effectiveness, silent operation, and its configuration will direct the airflow towards my case’s rear fans. Hopefully it will fit.

Video
MSI N210-MD512H GeForce 210: A PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP with 512 MB fast video ram should do the trick. This card was just released and doesn’t have a fan, so hopefully it won’t heat up the case too badly and throw errors. Choosing this card is a gamble since it is so new, but it has all the features I was looking for, namely quiet operation and the widest range of video decoding done in hardware (H.264, VC-1, WMV, DivX, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 HD). It can nicely upscale DVD playback as well and is actively supported in Linux. Linux zealots get weird about NVIDIA video cards since there are no open source drivers for these and some see it as “polluting” their machine by using a closed source driver. I’m more practical and always want to use the best approach for the job. While AMD have recently opened up the driver development for their ATI video cards, NVIDIA make the best accelerated video solutions for Linux and their life depends on maintaining that edge. As of this writing, I know that their Linux driver doesn’t support pushing sound through the HDMI cable, but that is ok since my stereo receiver doesn’t have any HDMI inputs (I’ll be using the mainboard’s digital optical output). I’m really looking forwards to putting this little beast to work.

Power Supply
SeaSonic S12II 330 Bronze 330W: I swear by these power supplies and have never been disappointed by SeaSonic’s quality and quiet operation. This power supply is highly efficient and sustains its power curve over a wide range of operating loads which reduces energy waste and power costs. This unit will make up for its higher cost in the power it will save over its (5 year warranty) lifetime. It has all the connectors that I need as well as being incredibly quiet.

RAM
G.SKILL 2 x 1GB (Dual Channel) DDR2 800: Cheapest RAM out there with the best quality for the price. Lifetime warranty if it goes bad – hopefully it will work with my mainboard.

Optical Media
LITE-ON 24x DVD Writer: I couldn’t find a plain DVD drive on NewEgg, where I was making my mass purchase. Crazy! Apparently, this SATA drive is quiet but I’m not expecting much. The brand has a good reputation.

Remote Control
Homebrew Serial IR Receiver: I never did get this to work on Telly and we became comfortable talking through the network or using a keyboard. Perhaps the the MB will make a difference, and I found better documentation since I last attempted to get it to work. I’ll use my Harmon Kardon Audio/Video Receiver’s remote.

Windows/Mac/Linux: XBMC media center has dropped a 9.11 alpha release for all platforms, with quality fixes on all three computer platforms and more powerful skinning abilities. If you’re not afraid of a bug or two, it’s yours to grab.

From the outset, not a whole lot looks new, but XBMC has made some real improvements under the hood. From the developer’s release notes:

• DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
• Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
• Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
• Switch to Core Audio on OSX
• Many VDPAU improvements under linux
• Many platform-specific customizations

There’s a promise for "much much more" to be revealed as the final release approaches, but core video and audio improvements is always welcome among media fans.

Looking to get set up with XBMC? We went on a home theater PC kick last week, showing you, step by step, how to build a silent, standalone media center on the cheap and customize the heck out of XBMC.

XBMC 9.11: Alpha1 ready for testing [XBMC via Kabatology]

There was a time when the X in XBMC stood for Xbox, but now just look at it. The open source project is showing up on everything from MIDs to Apple TVs and soon will be in the wild running on ARM-powered devices, with the development team posting a teaser video of the software running quite well on a tiny 600MHz Beagleboard. It’s a fraction of the size of most HTPCs and, at $150, a fraction of their cost, too. Right now the software seems to be struggling a bit with what looks to be 480p wide content, but the devs promise proper HD playback in the full release — though they’re not saying when that full release will be.

[Via Hack A Day]

The XBMC team has posted a teaser showing the current state of the ARM port of this popular open source media software. We’ve embedded it after the break where you can see the package boot up and playback HD video. In it we see that the system is decoding the signal well, but image rendering needs some tweaking before this will be ready.

The hardware used is a Beagleboard which runs a 600 MHz ARM processor, has OpenGL 2D/3D acceleration, puts out HD via a DVI port, and is selling for about $150. The 3″ by 3″ board can be connected to a network using a USB WiFi dongle. Although integrating XBMC by hacking TV firmware is a long way off, we’d consider velcroing one of these to the back of our HDTV and getting rid of the hulking PC behind the entertainment center.

Can’t wait for this version to hit a stable release and don’t mind using hardware that is just a bit bigger? Check out this guide for setting up XBMC on the $200 Acer Aspire Revo.

[Photo: Koenkooi ]

XBMC, el mejor Media Center con diferencia, por fin se puede montar en pequeños PCs basados en Atom (llamados ‘nettops’, por ser una mezcla entre ‘netbook’ y ‘desktop’) como el Acer Aspire Revo. Consiguiendo un rendimiento excelente, a un coste de risa.

¿Cuál es la magia? Pues que estas preciosidades están basadas en la plataforma Ion de Nvidia, que incluye una GPU gráfica de gran potencia que ayuda a la exigua CPU Atom en las tareas de reproducción de vídeo de alta definición. Lo cual significa que se consigue reproducir vídeo incluso a resoluciones de 1080p, usando sólo un 10% de CPU.

Desde que en Febrero de este año los desarrolladores de XBMC consiguieron hacer uso de la GPU de Nvidia, nos abrieron a los entusiastas de la alta definición la posibilidad de usar los baratísimos nettops como plataforma para este magnífico Media Center. Que, dicho sea de paso, aún no ha sido superado por ningún otro en cuanto a capacidades, facilidad de uso, universalidad de formatos y medios, extensibilidad, y (no menos importante) absoluta gratuidad.

Por 200$ en EEUU (el modelo más barato, que resulta más que suficiente, lástima que en España no se venda) y un par de horas, podemos tener el equipito funcionando sin hacking de ningún tipo. Las ventajas respecto a la “antigua” plataforma del XBMC (la Xbox) son: reproducción de vídeo 720p/1080p, HDMI, 4 puertos USB, WiFi (en modelos más caros)… Y por 20$ más, con mando a distancia incluído.

En la siguiente guía se explica paso a paso cómo conseguirlo. Ya no tienes excusa, así que… ¿a qué esperas?

Visto en lifehacker | http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap

After a fortnight of nagging, my Dad finally a bought a shiny new LCD TV. It’s an LG Jazz 32” TV (don’t comment that it’s too small). It’s a Full HD 1080p panel with 500W PMPO speakers.

I opted for the stand instead of wall-mounting, partly because the mess of wires dangling would really spoil the look of the TV. My sources of video were a Hathway Cable Connection (awesome quality + all features of big DTH services + Rs. 30 per month = ) and an Dell XPS laptop connected via HDMI.

Video Quality:

In general, the picture quality is pretty good. But if you watch SD content (low resolution) , like regular cable you’d appreciate it only if you watch it from a distance. I didn’t conduct any “technical” tests on the set, but i feel the colors are quite strong which, incidentally can be easily adjusted to one’s preference. Watching the only 1080p movie I have – Kung Fu Panda – was an awesome experience. The detail and fineness of the video was breathtaking. Regular DivX movies also look good, but again, you’d like it more on watching from a distance. I played a few games and was just blown away by the sheer richness of the display.

Audio Quality:

This has been advertised as the TV’s USP. The 500W speakers sounded great in the showroom, but better at my home! The set has a 3.1 pseudo-surround speaker system – 2 on the sides, woofer at back and one speaker in the front (unnoticable unless you touch it). The speakers are said to be tuned by Mark Levinson, whoever he is… . The TV boasts of “Clear Voice” technology, which when enabled, amplifies the vocals and reduces the background sounds. But I didn’t quite like it, especially in movies where the score/music would get drowned out. (so I just disabled it )

Other Features:

The TV works great in my opinion. Small niceties like a USB port to play music /pictures /DivX videos are appreciated. The remote feels tactile but sometimes I wish it’d been smaller. The manual has instructions to program the “universal” remote for your STB and DVD player. But I couldn’t get it to work with my Hathway STB, probably because it’s not a HD-STB. (Don’t comment back that India is 3rd-world) Another gripe is that the TV takes too long to start upon pressing the power button, but that can be overlooked. All in all, this gets a Thumbs Up from me!