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Users / 1st Experience with Linux MCE - Need help with media support.
« on: April 12, 2008, 11:34:56 am »
Hello everyone.
I have been doing a lot of research about setting my 1st HTPC with the following main goals.
Disclaimer: Until a week ago, I never touched a linux distro besides ubuntu live cd.
I spent a lot of times reading guides and previewing different solution online (Windows MCE/MythMedia/LinuxMCE/GB-PVR) and I gotta say LinuxMCE tickled the gadget lover in me.
I then grabbed an old p4 machine to play around and also tried a virtual pc installation (sooo painfull because of the 16bits video). Both gave me unsatisfactory results (ati card on the p4 and 16 bits video on VPC). Now I realize after many hours researching solutions for the VPC and the ATI card, that these are common issues but coming from a Windows world, where everything is truly plug and play, I jumped into this project very naively. I strongly encourage you to have something along there lines on the main page: "Will only work with supported hardware"
I decided to take a old HDD and put it in my main pc (nvidia card on this one), unplug the existing one and start from scratch. I got to setup everything with my vga output first. It worked! The main interface is nice, the options screens are a little "rough around the edges", but hey, It's FREE. I put a DVD in there that started to play and went to rip it. I couldn't find any keyboard/mouse input guide so I had to press and guess to find that the F-keys were used to drive many menus (main UI/volume/media control).
I then proceeded to setup the box with my component output. However no option for 1080i was present. I read you could change it in the xorg.conf but detailed instructions for a newby to linux were nowhere to be found.
I finally plugged in my External HD with about 20 flac albums, and nothing was shown in the media. The only way I can select songs is to browse by filename.
So here are my newbies questions (need detailed answer please, im trying to learn this):
How do I enable 1080i output and setup the overscan settings like the wizard did for 480p?
Why is LinuxMCE not reading the Flac metadata from my files?
I will glady post detailed specs / sample if needed.
Thanks for any help provided.
I have been doing a lot of research about setting my 1st HTPC with the following main goals.
- Archive my CD collection to FLAC files and tag them accordingly
- Archive my DVD collection to folder rips (Video_TS) and tag them accordingly
- Setup a NAS or Server to hold all my digital media
- Setup a HTPC or / and Extender to access it throughout the house
Disclaimer: Until a week ago, I never touched a linux distro besides ubuntu live cd.
I spent a lot of times reading guides and previewing different solution online (Windows MCE/MythMedia/LinuxMCE/GB-PVR) and I gotta say LinuxMCE tickled the gadget lover in me.
I then grabbed an old p4 machine to play around and also tried a virtual pc installation (sooo painfull because of the 16bits video). Both gave me unsatisfactory results (ati card on the p4 and 16 bits video on VPC). Now I realize after many hours researching solutions for the VPC and the ATI card, that these are common issues but coming from a Windows world, where everything is truly plug and play, I jumped into this project very naively. I strongly encourage you to have something along there lines on the main page: "Will only work with supported hardware"
I decided to take a old HDD and put it in my main pc (nvidia card on this one), unplug the existing one and start from scratch. I got to setup everything with my vga output first. It worked! The main interface is nice, the options screens are a little "rough around the edges", but hey, It's FREE. I put a DVD in there that started to play and went to rip it. I couldn't find any keyboard/mouse input guide so I had to press and guess to find that the F-keys were used to drive many menus (main UI/volume/media control).
I then proceeded to setup the box with my component output. However no option for 1080i was present. I read you could change it in the xorg.conf but detailed instructions for a newby to linux were nowhere to be found.
I finally plugged in my External HD with about 20 flac albums, and nothing was shown in the media. The only way I can select songs is to browse by filename.
So here are my newbies questions (need detailed answer please, im trying to learn this):
How do I enable 1080i output and setup the overscan settings like the wizard did for 480p?
Why is LinuxMCE not reading the Flac metadata from my files?
I will glady post detailed specs / sample if needed.
Thanks for any help provided.