Media players and the TV
I’ve spent a while trying to get Elisa to work on the computer attached to my TV (a PPC Mac Mini running Ubuntu). Video was slow and jerky, and there was a strange white bar graphical glitch. Anyway, after fighting all day with it, compiling the latest version of Elisa and so forth, I eventually gave up and installed MythTV. And it works perfectly.
I don’t really want MythTV. I prefer GStreamer-based applications, because I think GStreamer is the way forward, and Myth does a mountain of stuff that I don’t want, like watching live television; all I want to do, for the moment, is watch recorded video files. I like Elisa’s interface more than Myth’s. I’m more able to write Elisa plugins than I am for Myth.
Still, Myth (using VLC as the playback program) works fine, and Elisa doesn’t, and I don’t think Elisa will get better; it seems that the problem might be the open source ATI drivers, which aren’t (apparently) as good as the closed source ones. I can’t run the closed source drivers, though, because they don’t exist for powerpc, which is what the Mac Mini is (even ignoring that I don’t want to run them because they’re closed source). So MythTV it is. There is probably a lesson here.
XBMC seems to have the nicest interface for watching videos(although the linux port won’t be finished for a whie) that I’ve come accross.
Actually on the xbox you get nice things like the analogue triggers scroll lists faster if you hold them down more.
+ A music player with project M and a large amount of preset vis’s
+ Picture viewer
samba support, last.fm, shoutcast, python scripting…. just need the linux port to be finished so it can migrate successfully from it’s dead platform.
29 minutes later
Lesson:
Don’t buy Apple products that are filled with proprietary hardware and software, especially when the company actively pursues goals to stop the reverse engineering of their products to work on other platforms!
My Ubuntu Dell with intel card works wonderfully well with Elisa 0.3.3 from fluendo’s repositories.
52 minutes later
Derek: I would agree with you if I hadn’t been given the Mini for free. A relatively nice looking HTPC with Intel graphics and so forth is going to cost me a couple of hundred quid, I would have thought. That’s a lot to spend just to watch videos on the telly when I already have a machine that’ll do it running on free software.
58 minutes later
When I last tried elisa, I had video issues as well, and this was on an intel card, It is still very experimental at the moment I think.
I was looking around for something to replace the PC that acts as nothing but a music player. I bought a Hard drive enclosure that included media player functionlity from maplins for £30.
After spending most of an evening, and about four hard drives, to try and get it to recognise the disk properly in the software.
I got it working, eventually, and aside from having the worlds loudest fan inside, all apeared to be working, played video quite well actually. I copied all of my music on to it, nicely ordered in an artist/album directory tree. It scanned through all the files, then put them in one massive big long list, that you can only scroll from the top. (A few thousand tracks!)Good luck trying to listen to any white strips albums.
Needless to say I am now on the lookout for a cheap, quiet and intuitive mp3 player to plug into the TV.
I’m thinking of a passivly cooled P3 box tucked under the tv, with putting an actual (low power) file server elsewhere.(Booting off a compactflash card would be good) I have loads of bits hanging around that I could use to do it. It would probably help to tidy the house as well!
Whilst typing this, I have installed elisa(from the gutsy repos) and it seems to be working better than it did, (On my eee it doesn’t quite fit on the screen, and I don’t have any music on it to test, but it picked up the photos well)
V ery bling, although it doesn’t need a very powerful card to run.
I had a powermac just around the time that PPC ubuntu was dropped as an official ubuntu version, and it was a bitch to find software even before then. Basically anything that wasn’t in the repo’s wasn’t available, unless you complied it yourself.
Or you could just install OSX and front row ;)
3 hours later
So, running MythTv on linux ppc is possible. Any recommeded resources for getting it up and running? I too have a mini with ubuntu installed.
43 hours later
tgs: I just installed the mythtv control centre, and then went through it ticking the appropriate boxes. It did all the heavy lifting for me.
43 hours later
Are you using the mini as both mythtv front and backend? Did you purchase a video capture card or any other extra hardware?
2 days later
tgs: yes, both front- and back-end. I have no video capture card atm, although I’m seriously considering a Freecom DVB-T TV Freeview USB Stick.
2 days later
And now I have ordered said stick.
2 days later
Be sure to let us know how the USB stick goes.
I’m interested in picking up UK freeview with Myth too.
3 days later
I am going to go with XBMC jere as i am a BIG fan of Xbox
Linux Mods. My old soft Mod Xbox using linux was only thing i needed for my TV Media untill i got the geeky feeling i could do better stiped it down changed the case to a more roomie case with better cooling added stand alown CD player for the misses so she didn’t need to mess around prowing up the xbox was just a simple cd r with a audio
converter to the secandy speekers — oooops gone off topic
But the Mini is a very nice looking device and can’t go wrong with free wish someone was that nice with me lol.
My next media pc will be a only HT 3.2 gig intel with a standard Foxconn mb with 1 gig ram as thats what i have kicking around.
I also was going to try mythtv with my TV card but never got the 2 to talk linux and windows both happy find the card and both are able to us it its a old media PC not center but these things companys bring out for the home user to have everything for so called cheap but anyway works great untill i try and get it to work with mythtv never worked so i ended up stop using my TV card and went back to the TV provider i was with (UK Virigin meida) until i got borad of telly now i just do my online things and Working to better my self with Linux.
Hope the USB stick go’s well 4 you
10 days later