New Wiki: How to Select Mainboards for Your LinuxMCE System

[alx9r]

I've written a wiki article that will hopefully make the task of learning how to select a mainboard for LinuxMCE a little less labor intensive.  You can find it here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/How_to_Select_Mainboards_for_Your_LinuxMCE_System

The content is based almost entirely on information gleaned from this forum.  It is really just a more organised and to-the-point compilation of all the invaluable mainboard-selection wisdom posted here over the past few years.

I wrote the article with the hope that it would help new users as much as possible.  It probably doesn't contain much new information for regular forum readers.

If you have a working system it would be great if you could answer the hardware survey thread that I will post in a moment -- I'll use the survey information to improve the wiki article.

Regards,

Alex
newbie advocate

[seth]

 

This is a great new addition to the wiki. Fantastic job.

Thank you, from a meager end user!!!

Regards,

Seth

[wierdbeard65]

Thanks, Alex!

This is exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my various postings concerning guides for Noobs.

Teriffic job 

[Edited to correct the salutation! ]

[markitman2]

I looked at the charts on Tom's Hardware but I don't know which tests or benchmarks are the most appropriate. Any suggestions?

[alx9r]

Thanks for the props.  I assume wierdbeard65's comments were directed at me

[Pnuts]

very nicely laid out and informative. Ill give you the nic\audio info in the other thread when i can get a chance.

[merkur2k]

Ive been looking for a good source of sample videos in various resolutions and bitrates, are the ones you used available freely somewhere?

[bongowongo]

Very nice idea,
I want to contribute. I have an Asus b206, and want to make a page about it, if i get it working.
The nic works out of the box (after boot order change in BIOS)
But after installing LinuxMCE through PXE, the HDMI signal dies, I do not know
if this is because of the ATI card or that something else happened.(using 810 alpha of 08-May-2009)


P.S.
I don't know about the Asus b202, but I had to press "ins" for quite a while
to see the BIOS screen, and then press "f1", it took me a while to figure it out.
If it is the same with your b202, I would recommend to add it to your wiki.

[alx9r]

Ive been looking for a good source of sample videos in various resolutions and bitrates, are the ones you used available freely somewhere?

Freely yes.  Easily distributable in a nice package, no.  As I was doing the testing I decided I should compile sample videos into a sort of "codec test pack", put it out there on bittorrent, and start a forum survey so we can get some more data for that section. 

If you want to undertake this, I recommend searching bittorrent for HD videos.  Many of them have short samples included in them.  Download the samples and check the codec/fps/bitrate/resolution using Video Inspector or GSpot.  Once you collect a variety of them organize them in a bittorent release. 

Regards,

Alex

[ivanp]

Alex,i cant find the right words to thank You enough on this new Wiki. I have been around LMCE for a year now and was trying to get all of important stuff in one place.Your wiki has all i wanted to gather,THANK YOU.
I was wondering would it be possible for You to put somewhere on the Web the video files You were using for testing,so others (like me) could use them also and post our own results in Your wiki. That way we could build a nice DB for everyone and start a great and detailed Wiki page.

[tschak909]

Alex, thank you so much for your work here.

What we need now, is a revamp of the main page, etc... so that we can easily point to pages like this.

Anyone want to take this on? Just do it.

-Thom

[alx9r]

Alex,i cant find the right words to thank You enough on this new Wiki. I have been around LinuxMCE for a year now and was trying to get all of important stuff in one place.Your wiki has all i wanted to gather,THANK YOU.

You're welcome.  Thanks for the feedback -- I was hoping it would help people.

I was wondering would it be possible for You to put somewhere on the Web the video files You were using for testing,so others (like me) could use them also and post our own results in Your wiki. That way we could build a nice DB for everyone and start a great and detailed Wiki page.

Please see my previous post in this thread.  Hopefully someone can volunteer to undertake that.

[alx9r]

Alex, thank you so much for your work here.

You're welcome.  And thank you for all the software you write and maintain.

The software that you and all the other LinuxMCE devs are creating is awesome.  I think it deserves good user documentation.  I don't write code so I'm happy to do the documentation.  Anything I can do to help this project gain momentum I think is worth doing.

Cheers,

Alex

[ivanp]

Please see my previous post in this thread.  Hopefully someone can volunteer to undertake that.

Alex, i came acroos this site:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

There are 720p and 1080p videos, all encoded in WMV and 24 fps. MAybe we could use those for HD testing?

[alx9r]

There are 720p and 1080p videos, all encoded in WMV and 24 fps. MAybe we could use those for HD testing?

I think some could be included, but a wider variety of codecs, bitrates, and fps should be tested than just those offered on that page.

Alex