Dedicated networking

[tschak909]

I'm sorry you won't be sticking around. A Shame, because we do a lot of things none of these other systems do..not even counting the stuff that works out of the box...

All the same...FreeVo is very much like a hybrid of MythTV and XBMC, just not as far along...

and this really underscores a serious beef I have... This predilection to cater to the geeks with pocket protectors, without any regard to trying to make things polished whatsoever...

Yes, I am being ascerbic. It totally blows my mind that people have problems with our requirements for network configuration, versus what you get, and yet you'll spend HOURS and WEEKS and DAYS fighting it, or with another system writing all this infrastructure from scratch JUST TO REINVENT THE WHEEL for WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE. If you want to expend energy, why don't you expend it trying to help everyone else and not just yourselves, by trying to expand LinuxMCE to handle these other functional scopes?

-Thom

[freymann]

One last cheeky question .   Some alternatives were suggested.  Xmbc doesn't appear to handle TV, so that's a non starter.  Unless MythTv has got a lot less flakey, I won't be trying that!  I have to work with windows, so hate having it at home.  I did however come across FreeVo, which has multiple backends and front ends on one network, which is exactly what "I" am looking for.  Has anyone tried that? 

I personally like to see what other offerings are available out there. I haven't looked at FreeVo before today. I must say that if I knew about it when I was struggling with LMCE back in March I would have given it a try. I see it's available in Synaptic Package Manager under ubuntu so installation should be quite easy.

I don't why you've blown off MythTV. It comes in many different packages, and I would highly recommend MythBuntu. It'll do your TV and media quite well and doesn't require you to rejig your network configuration (although your mileage over wireless won't be all that great due to bandwidth restraints). There's plenty of great support for MythBuntu and MythTV.

LinuxMCE on the other hand is a super package and you'll be missing out! But if you can't set up your network properly or find hardware that is compatibility, then anything is better!

[LameDuck]

LOL, just downloaded and booted the FreeVo Live CD and booted it.  Flicked through the bland sparse menu's and selected to watch the short video that shipped in it's library, at which point it hung the box.  Suspect Thom was right with his "Not as far along" comment.

Clearly I'm going to have to play around with options some more.  I'm kinda luck I guess as I have 2 spare machine at the moment, so I'm going to try to set LMCE how I'm not supposed to do it.  I'll build 2 hybrid boxes and disable DHCP on both of them.  If I can get to the point where I can record on hybridA, then watch it on hybridB, then I'll consider that a result and roll it out on my home network, or rather on the the 3 media centres on my home network.  If it fails then I'll give MythTV another shot.

Seems I'm not done yet Thom 

BTW - Decent forum too, a lot of other forums would have been far less mature with this potentially contentious thread 

[freymann]

LOL, just downloaded and booted the FreeVo Live CD and booted it.  Flicked through the bland sparse menu's and selected to watch the short video that shipped in it's library, at which point it hung the box.  Suspect Thom was right with his "Not as far along" comment.

It most likely didn't detect your video or other hardware properly.

Out of curiousity I downloaded the LiveCD and burnt it to a CD and booted up with it last night/this morning. I don't have any tuner cards in my office machine so all I got was video, music, and Firefox. No mouse clicks seemed to work. The video played fine, not sure about the music. Although it loads and runs it was anything but impressive. I probably didn't give it a good 'demo' mind you.

I've yet to see anything offer the features LMCE has. I personally enjoy watching TV and being able to click the green button and bring up the menu overlay and poke around my video folder or music folder during commercials, or flick on/off/dim a light, without missing a beat. All the other media centers get you into your media and to do pretty well anything else you have to exit back to a menu. I'm spoiled now!

I'm kinda luck[y] I guess as I have 2 spare machine at the moment, so I'm going to try to set LMCE how I'm not supposed to do it.  I'll build 2 hybrid boxes and disable DHCP on both of them.  If I can get to the point where I can record on hybridA, then watch it on hybridB, then I'll consider that a result

Somehow I doubt you'll get that to work. Why not set up a core/hybrid with two network cards and then boot up a media director off the 2nd nic and see how it really works? One main 'core' is much easier to look after, and net booting up media director's is a breeze and much simpler than what you're talking about. I like Thom's comment about those supposedly in the 'know' that go out of their way to fight LMCE instead of sitting back and letting LMCE do all the hard work for you.

BTW - Decent forum too, a lot of other forums would have been far less mature with this potentially contentious thread 

To me, comparing LMCE against other packages is not taboo. If anything it confirms that LMCE is a great package (once you get it running)! However, I think somewhere out there everybody musta went to a anger management class as I've definitely noticed a big improvement in the tone of the posts of late, which is a great thing.