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I know that cisco model is among the 5 easiest phones to configure with asterisk.  No argument that it is a nice phone.  With the price tag approaching 300 per phone I think I will find an alternate phone though.

Yes its specific to the Lmce UI2

In addition the ION based units support video acceleration without it ATOM based fail miserably with HD video.

Thanks for that reminder.  UI2 is where the issue would lie.  I am pretty leary about sticking a ATOM230 or 330 proc on the core though.  Considering high enocoding loads would have to kill that proc pretty quick.  I guess you are trying to solve that with your homerun boxes, but you would probably get a better bang for your buck by putting a good proc and some good encoding cards into your core.  That will also fix some network latency problems and take strain off your NIC. 

We gladly accept patches.

One of my goals is to have a test lab setup and start assisting the open source community in a much more hands on way.  Currently I only get to dabble in open source stuff because I work in IT and am dealing with these products at work.  One day soon.

In another post you made mention that the NAS needs to be on the client side network of the Core, and not on the greater internet side.  This seems pretty counter productive.  Could you elaborate why the NAS needs to be client to the core?  I know there are likely several ways to fix this,  but since you seem to already have encountered some of these problems I would love your insight into why you solved the problem by moving the NAS.

It sounds like a problem in xorg.conf.  Is this a fresh install?  If so I would just download the linuxmce install dvd and start fresh.  Otherwise post your computers specs so we can check for hardware compatibility issues.

I have not tried this on linuxMCE, but under standard linux you can configure samaba to read a windows file share, and in-kind share with windows box's.

Having all your MDs centralized works and is neat but I like having them in the rooms so that they can be used to boot Windows as well. Also you can attach a CD/DVD drive and just pop things in to play. Not that I have this but I can also assume that follow me works well so you can have the bluetooth dongles on each one of them.

schmich, I agree about having your media directors by the tv's.  So many advantages.  However I was commenting on removing the tuner from the core and placing it as a network device.  That concept seems very expensive and with little real advantage.  I would like to be proved wrong though.

I don't understand what the advantage of the network based tuners is.  As I understand it the linuxMCE system automatically shares video feeds from various sources, so having an internal card in your Core would share that feed throughout the house already. 

A lot can be said for needed to crack a case to add storage.  I would recommend a NAS as opposed to storage on the Core, but almost all the Intel bridge chipsets support hot-swappable SATA ports.  Drop a basic linux install on it and run MDADM and you have a larger, very VERY robust NAS system that you can even integrate your windows boxes with.  The price for 2tb of storage in this manner is about 455, with about 200 of that coming from 2 2tb storage drives.  Be careful with your selection of hard drives.  The Seagate tb drives have had some major issues lately.

I would also like to note that the hardware I listed earlier has been reviewed on newegg as working with MythTV.

I planned on using the WebDT orbiter, that seems to have speaker/microphone capability? do you think that I could utilize this as a telephony device, ....

No not at this time.

The best MD phone solution is a Solo USB mic .

Not to take away anything from "MR Rock"
LinuxMce has tight integration with Asterisks and it has its own features and functionality that will not handle separate business lines etc without custom configuration. That may or may not break LinuxMCE functionality.

Some great Ideas here but some seem to be made without a whole lot Lmce experience.

Also adding a Blu-Ray drive with a LinuxMCE is kind of waste  blu-ray under Linux is very new shaky at best) and is not integrated into lmce.

Not that they cant be done "We gladly accept Patches" just don't want your expectations to get off base.


Tim

Thank you for correcting me Tim.  You are correct that I do not have a lot of LinuxMCE experience. 

Question though since I do have a fair amount of asterisk experience.  You said you can not integrate business lines.  It is my understanding that the UI allows you to configure multiple phone lines under linuxMCE and select which phones to ring.  How is that different from configuring a business line?  This is a serious question, I'm not trying to be combative.

Also I have never had a problem with linux and an Intel chipset.  Every intel GMA based mobo I have used has worked all but perfectly out of the box, and all sources I can find have not complained of intel compatibility.  Is this something specific to LinuxMCE or is this a specific chipset you are referring to? 

I wholly agree about the ATI cards.  Support for them is flakey at best.  I have configured ATI cards to work in linux, however I would not wish that on my worst enemies. 

Again thank you for bringing some LinuxMCE experience to the table.  I have done a few installs of LinuxMCE on under powered test environments and am working towards a whole house system in the next 30-60 days.  I have extensive experience with Linux, Asterisk and home theater systems as well that I am cobbling information together from.  Just sharing what little knowledge I have.

They have both modals that sit outside of the case as well as internal cards.  I find that internal cards are more reliable and cheaper, but you can go with whatever system suits you best.  just remember, USB is plug and play.  This means that your cat can unplug your usb tuner while your recording your favorite show without you knowing.

VOIP.   WOW  ok here comes the can of goodness.

The asterisk system is capable of accepting and dispatching phone calls in many many different ways.  
When you say "VOIP" (Voice over Internet Protocol) you are talking about a specific carrier set that does not require any additional hardware on the asterisk system.  Voip providers will hand off either as a SIP service or an IAX2 service.  IAX2 is a little better for bulk call drop off, like say, between two offices with 20+ concurrent calls on each station.  In your case, it doesn't matter.  Just accept it.  I have my service through VIATALK http://www.viatalk.com/ who run something like 100 year for one phone number and "unlimited" phone calling.  (Your actually limited to something like 4000 a month or something.  Fine print is fun)  They work wonderfully with asterisk systems.

The other option is that you can get FXO cards (Read here about FXO vs FXO http://www.3cx.com/PBX/FXS-FXO.html) , preferably from digium as they are the best supported on the asterisk system http://www.digium.com/en/.  This means you use your standard every day phone from Ma Bell and the system routes it however you program it too.

You can then dispatch your calls in many creative ways.  You can use FXS cards to deliver your phone calls to standard phones.  When you think about an FXS line, imagine it like a phone line coming in from your phone provider.  You can run many phones off it, but you can only place one call at a time.  If you got 3 standard phones and plugged them into 1 FXS port, you could listen on each phone to the same conversation, but only have one phone call per FXS port.  If you had 3 FXS ports and each phone plugged into eachother, they all are treated like their own phone line.  You could call your kitchen phone from your office phone and your kitchen phone would ring like an outside caller was ringing in.  

Another option is to have IP phones.  IP phones can either be soft or hard.  I belive the phone system will turn your Media Directors into soft phones.  Soft phones are phones that are not stand alone dedicated phones.  They are software running on multipurpose hard ware.  So all your computers can be registered as soft phones.  Hard phones are IP phones, like this phone  
http://www.amazon.com/Soundpoint-IP-331-SIP-New/dp/B002Y37QOY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1265149510&sr=1-2.
This phone would plug into your network like any computer, and speak to the server through this means and would not require additional cards.

As far as routing your calls are concerned, the sky is literally the limit.  The asterisk system is capable of handling voice mail, transfering calls from phone to phone, and would meld all your incoming lines.  For instance, you have 2 personal phone lines and 1 business line.  If a phone call enters your business line the system can bring on an automated attendant stating that they have reached whatever business you run and to hold just a moment while they find someone to help them.  Then it can ring your office phone, then the rest of the phones in your house if you choose, or if you have outgoing lines available, your cell phone.  The same can happen with your personal lines.  You get to choose what phone lines are associated with what phones, and how they ring.  The setup can get complex, at least for me but that is because I choose to edit the conf files by hand, but the possibilities are truly endless.  I do not know what LinuxMCE does as far as ease of setup.

Sorry for the long response.  I am used to glazed looks and rushes for Tylenol after my explanations of this topic.  Please let me know if you need something clarified.

I was just thinking...How many of your TV's will have a full surround sound setup?  Certainly your kids won't have surround sound and subwoofers?  So you can go with a more serious rig for the tv's that need the additional power, and get the cheaper option for the tv's that don't need it.

Any card that can pick up analog cable will be able to view the feed directly from the cable boxes.  This isn't HD though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815116037
This card is a little pricey but sounds like one of the better cards.  It would work with two boxes at once.  It runs 130 with a little for shipping from newegg.  Hauppauge is definitely one of the more supported brands with linux.

Now I found this   http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/techspecs/

HDMI input to computer.  Sounds great, but I have no clue if it will work with linux.  I figure it's partly compatible because there are MacOSx drivers, but still.  

The other option is to bypass the Media Director for HD only.  This means that you either need a tuner card in the PC's by the TV.  This means you couldn't use the tiny computers you suggested earlier for the locations that could view the satellite feed in HD.  You would still be able to use all your LinuxMCE functions except time slip and record in HD.  The other functions would work.  

God this stuff gets fun doesn't it!

When you say sound processing, are you looking for a way to get the surround sound into place after the Media director has handed off the 2 channel audio?  If that is the case, you will really only ever get true stero out of the system.  The audio is only as good as the weakest link in the chain.  If you are looking for recomendations on individual recievers, I'm too far out of the market to give good product knoladge there.

However I offer a second option for your media director.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121353  for motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116265  for proc
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161030  for memroy, though you only really need one stick
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154084  for case, though there are many many choices here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136162  and Blueray player to polish it off.

The total here is 365.32 per unit, but you get a fully 1080p video on HDMI or DVI, the toslink cable, and a blueray player.  replace the blue ray with a standard DVD and you save about 70 bucks. 

Forgot to mention the jacks and their order of preference. 

Currently the best audio option would be toslink or optical.  This uses fiber optics to transmit up to 7.2 channels of surround sound.  It may be capable of more, the last time I checked (which was several years ago) the output limit on most recordings was 7.2.
Coaxial would be the second best, tied with some broken out RCA jacks.  Coaxial uses the same S/PDIF transmission type as toslink or optical.  However, since it is an electronic based system it has more noise built into it.  Same channel capabilities, just more lossy.
Obviously the more channels the better, but most surround sound systems do not accept more than 2 channels in the standard RCA input.  However most computer based surround sound systems only accept either 1/8" stero jacks or RCA.  I would use Toslink or optical where possible.

This is where your choices start getting furry.  If you want true surround sound out of these PC's you really need something that is at least 4.1 capable, and better yet with an optical output on it.  Depending on your computer selection almost any surround sound system will work.  The only requirement is that your receiver have an input that will correspond with an output from your computer.  If your computer has a coaxial S/PDIF jack then your receiver should have one too.  A standard headphone jack on any computer can be converted into 2 RCA audio ports.  Some motherboards allow up to 10 channels out in this manner on their motherboard.  Of your selections the First is only capable of stero as far as I can tell.  The second looks like it can do 6 channel, and the last is probably the best at possibly 8 channels.  The MSI (last option) also does not remap the ports using a driver, which will make it more likely to work in a linux environment without the availability of a separate driver option.   I am looking into pricing a Media Director with the whole package, but it is proving time consuming.  I will post when I come up with something to be reviewed by the masses.

I may out of line here, but I noticed two things in your selections.  Only the first supports HDMI, the second has a DVI plug which can be converted to HDMI.  The thrid only has SVGA.  Also are all the TV's in your house HD? 

I am getting enough money back from taxes to pay down a bunch of bills and hopefully buy a LinuxMCE setup for my house.  I will currently only be using it as a Multimedia system, though I will eventually be adding the phone component, security component and home automation to it.  

I currently have two rooms with TV's and will likely be adding two more rooms in the future, assuming I can get them wired (More a question of time then ability).

I would like to know what the cheapest media director setup would be.  Would an Atom330 processor be enough to power a media director?  I am going to have an off Core NAS storage system that will have uber amounts of storage space, and I am looking at having a Core with 2 Coax inputs and a Pentium Dual core which should suffice.  The other issue I have is that none of my current TV's are HD, so I would need either an S-Video output or Composite output.  We will move to HDMI Tv's in the future, but not right now.  Any input would be great.  Thank you all for a wonderful system for me to drool over!