Hi

Haven't tried one of these myself, but they look quite nice.
From the specs it seems to be able to run as a MD. But the wiki http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Generic_PC states 512MB of RAM, so I would suggest the Linutop 2, although the Linutop 1 might just cut it.

The main problem might be the graphics "card" (AMD Geode). From some googling, it seems that the chip set on the Linutop is supported by the xorg-video-driver-amd driver. I couldn't find any definite information about the video playback acceleration capabilities of the device/driver, so you may not be able to use it to display video or perhaps even use the UI2. Also, I think you need to manually set up the driver.

This indeed look like something that would be perfect for small MD.

sambuca

Hi

Yes, I suppose so. I'll see if I can find out something.

On the other hand, since widescreen TVs are so common these days, I think this kind of setting should be available from within the AV Wizard. Especially since LMCE likes to have complete control over such settings.

When I think about it, perhaps it is possible to change the resolution setting from the pluto-admin website. This way I wont have to worry about LMCE overwriting my settings. I suppose the nvidia driver probably has a modeline already that suits the 16:9 format. (720x576 or something).
Anyone have any idea if this is feasible?

sambuca

Hi,

I am sorry to say I don't have any solution to this, only that I have the same problem. Did you get anywhere with this problem?

When setting up the AV Wizard, I selected S-video out, and then I only get a list of PAL/NTSC resolutions to select from. Is there any way to get S-video out with 16:9 format?

sambuca

Hi

Thanks for the suggestion. I would certainly mantis it, if I knew it was a bug, and not just me messing around too much 

sambuca

Hi

After upgrading from 710b4 to 710RC1, I see some strange errors in DCERouter.log, and I am unable to view live TV on the MD. I tried to downgrade the pluto-mythtv-plugin to the previous version (two versions were available - 2.0.0.44.0802262200 and 2.0.0.44.0804112200), which "fixed" the issue for the MythTV plugin, although I don't think this is the correct thing to do.

Code:

01      05/11/08 23:25:43.548           ESC[31;1mCan't open plug-in file './SlimServer_PlugIn.so': ./SlimServer_PlugIn.so: undefined symbol: _ZN3DCE11MediaStream13SetNowPlayingEPNS_10OH_OrbiterEbbPNS_7MessageEESC[0m <0xb6c9d6c0>
01      05/11/08 23:25:43.548           ESC[31;1mCannot load plug-in for device: 148. Be sure the file SlimServer_PlugIn existsESC[0m <0xb6c9d6c0>

Anyone care to shed some light on what may have happened here?
Maybe some packages not updated correctly so that this symbol don't exist?

sambuca

Hi

I have successfully accessed MythTV on a 704 core from a normal linux PC . I am not 100% sure about the 710 version though, but I think it should work.

I haven't had any problems with LMCE/MythTV when doing this, but that isn't saying there won't be, perhaps some of the developers can elaborate on this?

sambuca

Hi, and welcome

Just a couple of suggestions/hints:
* MythTV quality - there is a setting somewhere (recording group?) in the mythtv frontend that allows you to select the quality setting for LiveTV etc. Maybe this will help.

* VoIP - I came over this forum post dealing with setting up a Gigaset handset using asterisk http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/927308.html, that guy is also in Australia.
I just purchased a Gigaset (S675IP) that I am hoping to set up with LMCE/Asterisk when I get the time.

* Extra keyboard keys - I suppose the procedure for setting up extra mouse buttons could work for this case too (haven't tried it myself, so don't shoot me  ). It is the wiki : http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Use_Additional_Mouse_Buttons

regards,
sambuca

I put a request in mantis http://mantis.linuxmce.org/view.php?id=3822 when we discussed it last, but there has not been any progress.

I had a pretty reliable setup using 704, where I could press the power button to have the MD suspend to ram and press it again to resume again. It took only a few seconds to resume it. Nice 
I just upgraded to 710, so I haven't had the time to set it up again, but it is high on my to do list. I will of course update the wiki article with my new findings, if any, for 710.

Since it seems the release is pretty close, I wouldn't bet on it being included, but I guess some of the devs should answer that. There still is the issue with LMCE loosing state or whatever as you mention. I have not looked into that.

As Ender points out in the mantis log, the suspend may not work with all hardware, so I suggest that there should be a checkbox or something in the pluto admin screen to enable suspend on a per MD basis.

Hi

According to this article http://dtmilano.blogspot.com/2006/08/pxe-wireless-booting.html it is possible (I have not tried it, just googled it). From a quick read, it would seem you need to have a wireless bridge device on your client, and a normal wireless access point connected to the network/switch.

The article also has a couple of links to other sites.

sambuca

Hi Lexje,

1. I think you need to use mytthv-setup to sort this out. I messed around with this setup too, and ended up re-doing it a couple of times before I got it right. But maybe some other user has some more insight into this?

2. I don't have a MCE remote, but I have to use the Up/Down buttons to change the channel. Perhaps it's the same for you?

The rest I'll leave for others.

sambuca

Hi

Short answer: you need to write a udev rule.

For some more information, you can see this link http://www.nabble.com/pvr-150-occasionally-swaps--dev-video1-to--dev-video0-td16358277s15552.html.
It is also described in the MythTV wiki http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Device_Filenames_and_udev.

Such rules can be a little hard to understand and get working.
I don't know of other ways to solve it, but that does not mean there aren't ;-)

sambuca

Hi Rich, and welcome.

First, since it is not clear from your post how you would like your setup to be, I would like to point out that you have two options for setting up LinuxMCE. You can set it up as a Core, which acts like a media server, but can not display the media. It just serves media to other computers (which are called Media Directors in LinuxMCE). Or you could set it up as a Hybrid, which is a Core and a Media Director (MD) in one.

I am thinking maybe a hybrid is your best option, but I just wanted to point out the two options.

1. LinuxMCE does have an integrated firewall/gateway to the internet, and it thus has support for two NICs. This should suit you fine, from what you say.

2. LinuxMCE has SMB/CIFS shares for the media directories, so you should be able to access your media from your laptop. You should also be able to backup your laptop (user data I suppose?) to the user share that LMCE creates.
There were some problems wrt flac and ogg files. The tags were not read from these files, and would not be listed unless you selected the file name display. I think there has been some work on this for the 710 version, but I can't say I have seen any definite confirmation that it has been fixed.

3. You should check that your DVB card is supported in the Linux kernel used by LinuxMCE. If the card is supported by the kernel, it should work fine with LinuxMCE. (LMCE uses mythtv for recording/live tv so you could check out their site also). I think the hardware should be good enough to record and playback at the same time, if you choose the hybrid setup.

4. As standard, LinuxMCE uses only one screen. There is a button to start the web browser from within LinuxMCE. There is yet another button that starts the normal KDE desktop, and you can switch back to LinuxMCE which then appears like just another application window. I don't know, but it might be possible to use the same setup you used before. But beware that LMCE might destroy your X server setup, in cases when it needs to rewrite the configuration.

5. If you can configure it using only the lirc configuration files, i.e. no custom modules or any modification to Lirc itself, I suppose it should work. You might need to define a device template to hold the configuration for you remote/receiver, depending on what type of receiver it is. Is it a simple IR diode connected to the serial port, it should be very easy. This is the kind of setup I use now.

No silly questions at all. It is very difficult to make out what your possibilities are with such a large project.
I also used freevo before switching to LMCE. If you only are going to use the media part of LMCE, I am inclined to say that the freevo UI is better suited for use with a remote. I find that for LMCE you need to use a mouse to navigate the menus efficiently. But of course, LMCE offers many other exiting features :-). Just my 2 cents.

sambuca

Hi

Its discussed a little here http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3929.0, http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=1502.0 and here http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=225.0. (I searched for 'speech')

I also think I remember the pluto guys discussing this a long time ago, but the found out it was not stable enough.

Not sure if anyone have made any progress on the issue though.

sambuca

I agree with you on not trying to add all sorts of different UI elements. It should be consistent for the user.

A RSS reader would be nice on it self also, I suppose.

sambuca

How about Miro? Not what jammastercd asked for, but as far as I know (and I don't know much, as I have not used either  ) its almost the same thing.

sambuca