| Hunting for the perfect Linux Media Center |
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Dec. 29, 2005)
Over at NewsForge, Jay Lyman does a good job of explaining why HP's Media Hub, a Linux media system, came to nothing. He also talks with some analysts and people in the business about why Linux media centers haven't appeared.
That's all well and good, but Lyman doesn't ask the question I want to know the answer to: why don't we have a good Linux Media Center PC program?
So what if businesses don't support one yet; this is open-source. Where's the good free software media center?
Windows has one, the Mac is getting one. What about us?
Let me spell out what I'm looking for.
I want a drop-in replacement for WMC (Windows Media Center) 2003. I want something that will not only let me watch DVD or video files on my computer, I want a program that will also serve as a digital video recorder (DVR), ala TiVo, and enable me to watch videos, no matter what their native format, from my network's hard drives on my Sony KD-34XBR960 34-inch HDTV monitor via a D-Link MediaLounge DSM-320 Wireless Media Player.
If you're thinking to yourself, "but WMC can't do that," you're right. It can't.
But, I've found that I can jury-rig a combination of WMC and Nero 7 to get my videos on disc and on my television. It's not easy -- the DSM-320 is one cranky piece of equipment -- but, it is doable.
Much as I'd like to use Linux as the foundation for my media center, I've found that I just can't do it... yet.
MythTV is one of the most popular attempts to come up with a Linux media center, but for me, and the rest of the Ziff Davis Internet crew it just hasn't worked that well. I've ran it on Fedora Core 3 and 4, and I've managed to get it to act as a DVR, most of the time, and to burn DVDs, most of the time.
Part of the problem, both with MythTV, and other programs isn't really their fault. Video work beats the heck out of PC hardware. If you don't have best in class equipment, and sometimes a particular piece of hardware, you're not going to be watching anything from your Linux box on your TV.
For example, the only TV card, which I personally have found to be up to the job of HDTV work under Linux is the pcHDTV HD-3000 Hi Definition Television Card. I've heard good things about other cards, but it's the only one that I've found that's up to snuff.
Still, even with all the right equipment, I've found MythTV just doesn't work well enough for me. In particular, the pipe transcoder, mythtranscode, which translates one video format into a DSM-320 friendly format, just doesn't do a good job.
I will say, however, that at least MythTV is easier to install than it used to be. This is due to an extremely helpful installation and troubleshooting guide by Robert Kulagowski.
There's also a tempting pre-packaged version of MythTV with Knoppix, named, what else, KnoppMyth. For some reason -- and I don't think it's the KnoppMyth's developers' faults -- I haven't been able to run it successfully. I strongly suspect there's some hardware trouble down in the graphics bus, but with one thing and another I haven't had time to track it down.
As for the other Linux-based programs, I've tried Freevo. It's fine for making a Linux box into a video player and a DVR, but that's as far as it goes. It's really just a user interface to other video programs like MPlayer and xine. If that's all you want, it's well worth using it, since once you've got it set up properly, you're all set for watching almost any kind of video on your Linux desktop.
Alas, I want more.
There are some other projects out there, but I honestly haven't done enough with them to have anything intelligent to say about them. Of course, that presumes I have anything intelligent to say about anything, but that's another story!
For now, though, my hunt for the perfect Linux Media Center continues. I'll put up with a Windows-based one if I must, but, boy, would I rather see one based on Linux.
 About the author: Ziff Davis Internet senior editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about technology and business since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the
way.
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