Minimum install for MediaDirector

[wsuetholz]

Hello,

  How much disk space is really needed on a director?  Could we set up a micro dist that would include enough to work as a director and still fit in < 128 meg?
There are some mostly working BitBake receipies for the orbiter, that somebody was doing up to have a Zaurus as a director, so maybe Open Embedded would work as a starting point?

I know, I know.. Do it myself...

On that note...  What are the critical packages that need to be installed and working for a MediaDirector that can still stream media.  But, don't hold your breath waiting for me to roll it :-)

I have a couple of RCA RM-4100 (AKA MSNTV2) boxes that are in the process of having LinuxBIOS ported to them, that will soon be perfect for MediaDirectors,  They have 1Meg of
BIOS memory to play with, and come with a 64meg CF card, that can be replaced.  To give you an idea..  One of the LinuxBIOS folks has installed a complete working Linux with an X Server in a 2 Meg BIOS chip.

Bill

[darrenmason]

Hi Bill,

A media director can operate totally diskless as they will network boot and utilise mounted network shares on the CORE machine.

Or are you talking about the minimum memory needed to operate as a Media Director?
The memory usage is dependant upon the devices installed and running on the MD. The big consumer of memory seems to be the OnScreen orbiter (especially if it is OpenGL). This then acts as a parent for most of the "Player" devices which are wrappers around the software that actually does the work (eg: Xine, MythTV etc). There is also a matching Plugin device running on the Core which enables the streaming aspect to work as well as Media selection etc.

A MD needs the minimum specification of whatever applications are used (eg: Xine).

In theory, there is is no need for an MD to run an OnScreen orbiter and still have devices installed and running, but I have not done this and I am not sure if anyone has.

I hope this has helped

Regards
Darren

[wsuetholz]

No, I was wanting to have everything running off of the CF drives.  (solid state, no unnecessary network traffic)

Bill

[robertsaron]

what is media director? is it similar to MythTV, or is more like a presentation software comparable to powerpoint? If it is like mythtv, which one is better? or does it depend on what you are doing?

[darrenmason]

No, I was wanting to have everything running off of the CF drives.  (solid state, no unnecessary network traffic)

Bill

Theoretically this is possible, but from the looks of the MD installation they have not tried to trim this down at all so it would require work.

Any reason why you think that this would be preferable over a network boot. I think the network booting is one of the best parts of the system. Keep in mind that the MD mounts the media shares from the core anyway - so they might as well mount their whole OS. They certainly could not run standalone.

I would be interested to see how you get on with it though.

regards
Darren

[darrenmason]

what is media director? is it similar to MythTV, or is more like a presentation software comparable to powerpoint? If it is like mythtv, which one is better? or does it depend on what you are doing?

The complete linuxMCE system consists of a central CORE computer which typically has lots of disk space and memory and hosts things like TV cards and Asterisk cards. Media Directors are PCs that typically are put in each entertainment area to play the centrally stored media. They have software wrappers around standard Linux open source products like MythTV, Xine, Asterisk etc. They are controlled by Orbiters which are the GUI for the system. Orbiter software can run on the Media Directors themselves or on other devices such as PDAs or Mobile Phones or even accessed through a web browser.

Hope that helps

Darren

[robertsaron]

That did help alot thanks. I am slowly switching away from windows, and all these new linux terms are slowly coming to me.

[darrenmason]

No problem, keep in mind though that what I was describing was this product (linuxMCE) not necessarily linux in general.

Despite its name, linuxMCE could really run on any operating system. Sorry to probably be even more confusing.

Darren