Linux Media PC

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2011 at 22:02

Hello all,

Basically, I am wanting to create a media PC through which I can view TV channels, record and pause live tv etc. I want to use Linux as it has a more simple GUI than Windows, so my family will be able to use it easily and will run better on a lower spec. I also don't want to have to break out a keyboard and mouse everytime I wish to watch telly.

I am a complete Linux noob, but have been reading a bit about it.

I was thinking of using Ubuntu and then finding an app that will allow me to do all of the TV related things. I would also like to file share from a partition on the drive to multiple windows computers within the house, is this all possible?

Would it also be possible to stream the TV from the media PC to the Window PCs?

Sorry for quite a bit of text, just want to ensure that this will work

FooAtari · 16 Jan 2011 at 22:42

MythTV is a Linux DVR
XBMC is quite popular to. Originally created for Xbox but now ported to other platforms.

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2011 at 22:50

Thanks, I will look into those now

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2011 at 23:18

I think that XBMC appears to be the best option, If I go for say an AMD Athlon II 3GHz, 2 GB RAM and a 9500GT GPU, reckon that it will run okay?

Any other plugins I would need to complete the aims I have?

robnut · 16 Jan 2011 at 23:36

XBMC doesnt support live tv as far as i know?

Harvey616 · 16 Jan 2011 at 23:41

There is a plugin for it called Mythbox that allows you to stream and record live TV

jack.mitchell · 17 Jan 2011 at 09:49

My XBMC box runs a similar spec to that and runs everything fine.

masterluke · 17 Jan 2011 at 13:10

I use ubuntu with XBMC on top as I like the ubuntu interface and support. You can get livetv on XBMC. I use a DVB-S card to get freesat through it. I use tvheadend to do the tv part. Its very stable and works nicely.

Harvey616 · 17 Jan 2011 at 18:00

Ah nice, what TV card are you using and what is it connected to cable wise?

masterluke · 17 Jan 2011 at 20:04

Harvey616 said:
Ah nice, what TV card are you using and what is it connected to cable wise?

Compro Videomate DVB-S350. Its connected up to an old sky digital minidish. The card was a bit of hassle to setup. I'd probably buy a more well-known brand next time but it DOES work very well once you get the drivers installed properly. Great value for a cheap card anyway. Picks up the HD channels no problem.

I used the instructions here to setup XBMC and tvheadend.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=51945

..that is a very long thread, but later on in it there are instructions on how to add a repo which has versions of XBMC and tvheadend which work well

Harvey616 · 18 Jan 2011 at 17:39

I was looking at the same card, but possibly two of them so that I can record and watch TV at the same time.

Thanks for the linky.

masterluke · 18 Jan 2011 at 19:43

Harvey616 said:
I was looking at the same card, but possibly two of them so that I can record and watch TV at the same time.

Thanks for the linky.

Should be fine.

I followed this post to get the card working.. this card gets incorrectly detected as a Compro T750 which causes problems. You need to force it to be detected as a T350.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10170935&postcount=44

dave-lew99 · 18 Jan 2011 at 20:45

I wouldn't bother with Myth, it's always been clunky, slow and unstable for me.

Take a look at yavdr, it's XBMC with live TV functionality built in (http://www.yavdr.org/).

Can't fault XBMC, it's excellent.

Harvey616 · 18 Jan 2011 at 22:17

Thanks guys

I am thinking of going for XBMC with the Mythbox addon, working as a backend to allow Live TV, but keeping the XBMC as the front end. I ran a quick virtualisation of a Ubuntu system, and it seems to work well

Vampyre · 20 Jan 2011 at 18:34

Mythbuntu is worth a look, I've always used mythtv and from the Wiki it looks like XBMC + Mythbox requires installation of a MythTV backend anyway and LiveTV isn't working with MythTV 0.24 at the moment.