I've finally taken the plunge and installed MCE 10.04. I got "Failed to setup X" when I tried the DVD install, so I followed the instructions on installing over Kubuntu and it worked. I got through the AV Wizard and saw Sarah, when I rebooted it goes right into flickr on the background, I get a cursor with 4 arrows that I can move around with my mouse, but I cannot get to anything else.

I looked for a way to get to something else during boot up but have not had any luck.

My Core is using

AMD A10
Gigabyte GA-F2A8585X-UP4
Using the onboard HDMI to a Samsung Display

When I click the mouse or hit some of the Function keys I can get a flash of something in the background that looks like the menu

Thanks for any help,

Has anyone tried this card for US cable? I'm on Comcast; called technical support and they said it would work, but they have no clue about how with LinuxMCE.

http://cetoncorp.com/products/infinitv-4-pcie/

Thanks for the effort, I wish I had coding skills to support your effort, but I do not. I just wanted to offer another idea to get this done; would it be possible to use USB "soundcards" for each zone, and then use individual amps (might be more flexible and lower cost)?

http://www.buy.com/pr/product.aspx?sku=216778522&sellerid=29345858

http://www.amphony.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=2

That way the distributed audio could be centralized (at the core location with speaker wires to each zone), or they could be separated to each Media Director in each zone (I would imagine synchronizing the audio would then be the hurdle). If the idea has merit, I'd like to help somehow; I can donate the hardware if it helped the cause...

Sorry, I'm an ME so I'm not versed on messaging bus architecture vs another type that would allow it, just thinking out loud....

This has probably been discussed, but just to open up a thought; does the architecture of MCE lend itself to distributed computing over a gigabit network? Ideally these would sit behind every monitor and stay on since they use very little power. Perhaps one could serve as the "core" that would direct all processing traffic among the nodes so you would have a robust, low power consumption system.

Anyone ever look into this? Still kicking around the idea of using this as a hybrid/core. What would be an ideal solution is this as hybrid and Raspberry PI as MD's...

Has anyone tried running either of these as a core?

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx#extern

or

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-openrdudetails.aspx#extern


Seems like one could put a nice system together using this as a core and then having a Guru plug;

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-40-guruplug-display-devkit.aspx

at every display as a Media Director (low cost and low power consumption)

Did your rig work as you specified it? Just curious since I'm ready to take the leap. I was also curious about the power usage, I'm looking for something quiet that doesn't use alot of power...

Just an FYI, followed up with the CyberData folks and their video doorbell is still not available, they hope to have it within the year at about $500-600 price, and it will interface with Asterisk as another phone, it will also be available as a surveillance camera...

if anyone is aware of an alternative, please share.

That sounds great, thanks again for the information, this is great...

GG

Is it practical to turn MD's on as needed, or do they take too much time to boot up? To save energy, I would like to only turn the MD in a room when I need it (similar to what I do now, when I want to watch TV in the Master Bedroom I turn the TV on)?

Question regarding regenerating the Orbiters; that wouldn't need to be done on a regular basis would it? If I understand correctly it would only be when you make a change or upgrade?

Also on PXE booting the Media Directors; to save power I was thinking that you could just turn on the MD when you want it, for example the one in the Master Bedroom would only come on when you wanted to watch or listen to something there. Would the PXE boot also take longer than practical in this case (leaving the MD off until needed)?

I have a demanding customer (=wife) that will veto the install if it's not as seamless as what we have now (TV in the bedroom hooked up to cable)....

If I use the Atom Based rack server and add an NVidea Graphics card would it work for as a Hybrid/Core?

Any thoughts on using something like this for a core (or hybrid/core)?

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-35-openrd-ultimate.aspx

My interest is in having a low power server to run MCE on 24/7.

If this is not ideal, would something like this work?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Supermicro-Intel-Atom-D525-Mini-1U-Rackmount-Server-/130482447286?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item1e615c23b6

I've looked through the Wiki and I'm a bit overwhelmed trying to find something that works and low power....

Thanks to all the pros

I've been searching the forum and wiki regarding Insteon, it looked like there was some momentum behind it for a while, but now I'm getting concerned because I have it throughout my home and it looks like it may not be supported. Does anyone have it working? I unfortunately do not have the programming skill to work on this, and a call to Smarthome did not leave me with the warm and fuzzies...

Please share your experience...

Thanks