I had been using various versions of Windows Media Centre (Everything from XP to Windows 7 RC1) and was reasonably satisfied with them until..... CHILDREN!! I got myself a living wrecking ball which went on a mission to throw all the DVD's across the house and demolish anything in his path so I really needed a way to fix this.
I then went on to finding linux based media centres and tried MythDora, Mythbuntu, standard MythTV on an Ubuntu install and finally eAROS but they either didn't seem to suit or in the case of eAROS just didn't work period.
MythTV was the closest but I only have 1 MCE remote and couldn't put a kb/mouse in the bedroom due to the whole wrecking ball situation.
I continued to google and came across the digg on LinuxMCE, skimmed through the video and decided to give it a whirl
So I grabbed an old Athlon 64 3500+ system I had previously decommissioned as my server and installed LinuxMCE onto it.
Install went well until it came to configuring TV.. I have an Asus U3100 DVB-T USB tuner which 710 doesn't even recognize... After a bit of research I found the firmware file for my tuner and was on my way to television goodness... Now that I had a working core this didn't solve my problem so I installed a diskless MD in my own bedroom to test and was pleasently suprised with how simple it was to get going.
I now have a second MD in the loungeroom attached to the LCD TV and have plans to put one in my sons room (Pending wife approval to run more cables)
I also plan to configure the telephone/camera systems and ultimately some HA equipment (Again pending wife approval) but for now i'm happy with just media
Overall it does some things I find strange (Such as being able to sort videos in any order except the order/structure i've copied them onto the core in) but the pros far outweigh the cons so i'll try to get used to it or jump into the deep end and try and change it.
That's my story
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