Linux for media centre and setup help!

Rob Turbo · 10 May 2013 at 20:40

I have an Acer Revo R3610 that I'm wanting to use as a media centre.

I have no experience with media centres, I have so far ripped my dvd collection to a folder on my HDD on my desktop and would like to access them through the acer, as easily as possible! An ideal setup would be turn on the Acer, it boots straight to a pretty list of files in the folder on my PC (at some point hopefully replaced by a NAS), so I can select one to watch. Is this possible?

I'll probably be using a Logitech K400 or similar, use of a wiimote would be nice if this is possible, seeing as though I only need to scroll through a list, select, play, pause, stop, I have one kicking around and they are bluetooth so in theory could work.

I'd like it to support blu ray rips as well, I'm planning on replacing my DVD writer with a blu ray drive of some sort, don't even know what file type a blu ray rip will be yet!

What would suit my needs or at least come close?

Dogers · 10 May 2013 at 21:17

XBMC.org is what you want - I've got a system doing exactly this. You can try it out first with their XBMCBuntu version which runs off a Live CD!

Rob Turbo · 10 May 2013 at 21:51

So after installing what do I need to do to get it to see a folder on my desktop with all my video files in?

Dogers · 10 May 2013 at 22:03

You'd have to share the folder with media in, then in XBMC tell it where that shared folder is and what it contains (films, tv, music, etc). It can either be added to the library, where it can scan and give you plots, backgrounds, proper titles, etc or you can just have it as a folder where you pick and choose the file to play.

The library option is much neater and you can have it automatically scan for new files to be added and sorted. Sharing out from a NAS makes this a bit better as you don't have to have your PC on all the time, obviously.

Have a look at the Gallery section of their site - they show the more popular skins that are available for it.

Rob Turbo · 10 May 2013 at 22:53

Sorted, thanks!

Just need to find a decent remote now, my original idea of a Logitech K400 seems a bit over the top now, apart from searching a massive collection I don't think a keyboard will be any particular use.

Dogers · 11 May 2013 at 16:08

I use a Logitech Harmony One, as the system I've got has an IR receiver built in - controls everything around the telly which is nice