Introducing myself

[tilma800]

Hello,

My name is Dennis Tilmans, 30 years old and I work as a mechanical engineer for www.kwantcontrols.com located in the north of the Netherlands.

I just bought my first house and I'm in the position that I still have to buy all components to be able to watch TV, listen to radio in the living room. I also collected a nice collection of music and some DVD's, both as hard-copy and on the PC in all kind of known formats.
As I do have to buy a TV, radio, amps, speakers, etc, I wondered if I could not go the PC based way and after reading a lot on the internet and here I think LinuxMCE has the features I need and has features I might use later on (home automation, etc.).

For now I'm still in the process of refitting the house (rebuilding the kitchen, bathroom, etc) and looking for a way to implement LinuxMCE in the right way for my situation.

The first 2 rooms what are most important to me to have access to my media are the living room (home theatre and music listening) and the study room (PC, mainly music). I'm still using Windows on my PC as I have Autodesk Inventor installed on it, but I use it for up to 95% for internet purposes 

I have tried Linux before, but I'm still kind of a newbie. I always switched back to windows after a while because at that time I could not do with Linux what I could do with a windows application. But now it seems that all is there, except for a Autodesk Inventor style of program.

I still have some reading and planning to do. Before buying hardware I will ask here if it will/should work.

Regards,

Dennis

[colinjones]

hi Dennis

As Mark said, if you want an easy time, do lots of research on the hardware - really do try to pick hardware that is "known good" with LMCE as it will make your life much easier. Don't go nuts on specs, you don't need the fastest CPU, the most RAM, or the higest end video card - in fact a mid range card is better in many ways. Definitely nVidia, no question there 6150 up or low 7000 series are just fine. 1G RAM should be fine to start with - put your media on your PC or a NAS, off the LMCE core so you can rebuild and tinker whenever you like without worrying about it. Follow the recommendations on 2 NICs/internal-external networks, its important. If you intend on doing TV, then VDR is a real option and much simpler/stabler than Myth for DVB countries like NL, and the next version is apparently going to address some of the remaining stuff and some of the things that Myth can do that VDR can't yet.

Good luck

[hermanvh]

Hi Dennis,

While rebuilding your house, make sure you install plenty of CAT5 cable. In most cases it is extremely difficult to retrofit cabling.
The more te better.

Good luck Herman

[seth]

 
Welcome Dennis.

You are in a unique position. You have all the resources available to you, to best choose your hardware. Use the http://wiki.linuxmce.org  wiki, and don't forget to reference the http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User_Setups User pages to see what most of us have up and running. Since you are starting from ground zero, again choose your components wisely, use the dvd install, and I think your experiences here with us will be nothing less than great. And speaking of experience. The dev's and power users can almost always be found on the irc channel @ irc.freenode.net in #linuxmce , just about any time of day. So keep a laptop or additional pc handy with  internet, and jump in during your installation or if you have a question. Also don't forget the forums http://forums.linuxmce.org in most cases if you run into an issue, so has someone else, so search for it. We are here for you. 

Lastly, once you are up and running, add your setup to the user setup wiki, and anything you discover along the way, contribute to the forums, and the wiki.

Best Wishes and Regards,

Seth

[colinjones]

If you intend on doing TV, then VDR is a real option and much simpler/stabler than Myth for DVB countries like NL, and the next version is apparently going to address some of the remaining stuff and some of the things that Myth can do that VDR can't yet.

Be careful though, I think that you need a TV card that can decode the digital signal. As far as I known, this would be required for the electronic program guide in VDR. If, like me, you are in a UPC region, you are out of luck, since UPC digital can only be decoded with their own boxes  .
I use mythtv, and there are xmltv interfaces for the EPG (look for tv_grab_nl_py and tv_grab_nl_upc on google). LMCE will get an upgraded mythtv at the next release, which will be even nicer than the current one!

Good luck,

Mark

I'm just talking about broadcast OTA TV, not paytv... so just an ordinary DVB-T card is fine. Naturally for encrypted services you need to make sure that you can install a CI module or something similar from your provider (they tend to get funny about that stuff, but its not unheard of!)