- Ability to view live tv or recorded programs from any MD
Yes, this is the same.
- Ability to play other media - videos/dvds/photos/music (should be a given)
Yes, this will work too. However... viewing photos through LinuxMCE is not very good. I don't think it supports slideshows, and when you do view a picture it's not full screen, and if you want to view a bunch of photos in a directory there's a load of clicking to make that happen. MythTV definitely handles photos better, and this is definitely a weak area of LMCE that could use improvement.
Music is another area I'm still not found of. On the weekend we had a party and I went to Media > Music > Other and selected Play All. The first time I did it, it decided to reload the router, so I had to do it again. It would play a short number of songs and then quit, forcing me to run back downstairs, repeat the sequence, and run back outside. It would stop again at random intervals and I found it quite annoying. Next time I'll exit to the KDE Desktop and try Amarok or something. I have enough music to play for over a week or more... it definitely shouldn't be stopping 30 minutes in. Editing a long playlist is also painful. To "remove" a song, you must click on it. That starts it playing and resets the playlist back to song #1. Now you must page down till you find your song again, which is now highlighted and playing, and click Remove. That resets the playlist back to song #1. Painful and useless. This needs a lot of work.
The "private" and "public" folders are interesting. I can drop in a bunch of Shania Twain pictures into my pictures folder and I'm the only one that can access them, by being logged into a MD as me, using the "Source" button and punching in my password (which you have to tell anybody in the room to look the other way, since you have to move the mouse over a number and then left click, leaving a star above but easily letting anybody viewing know what you're typing). So far I've noticed it completely ignores subdirectories though. I haven't tried any private music or videos so I don't know if the ignoring subdirectories on the private content is an issue with that media too.
Videos and DVD work fine. This release makes it easy to add the cover art and meta data for videos, and super easy steps to rip your own DVD's to the system. This part is very well done. The filters work well, and I was glad to see Sort by Filename shows you the directory structure in case you want to escape from the long alphabetical lists. Don't forget the More > Search function which is awesome for finding something specific.
When you have things set up, I think you will get a kick out of the ability to start playing music or a video, and then having the same thing play in another room at the same time.
- Play slideshows from my own photos, not just flicker images
The forums or the wiki has instructions on how to use your own photos in the desktop slideshow. I actually prefer the flickr material over my own so I have left it at default.
You might also want to check out how you are controlling the channels you are watching in TV mode. Mythbuntu had no problems with my MCE IR transceivers but LMCE hates them. I had to buy a couple USB-UIRTS and use them instead. There are threads with instructions on how to use both, but I've only been successful with the USB-UIRTS.
If you possibly can, you may want to yank out your current MythBuntu server drive and load LMCE on a spare drive. Since your MD's will network boot, you can leave the drives in them... in fact, I think LMCE will use them for local swap space (but you can tell LMCE not to use the drive otherwise).
This way, if for some reason you don't like LMCE over MythBuntu, you could easily go back.
Also note that if you have problems setting up your MD's to work under LMCE, you could load MythBuntu 7.10 on them and run fine. You'd need to figure out where to put your photos/music/movies so you can NFS mount the same directory structure on your frontends, but it's possible (I do it here) and you'd still have MythTV working as you do now, minus all the kewl bells & whistles of LMCE of course.
There are many benefits to LMCE, and a few weak areas, but you can get along fine just the same.
I also use X10 Home Automation, and I love the way it's integrated into LMCE. If I used VOIP I would be even more pleased. And I haven't ventured into home security or climate control. It's nice to know there's more to play with, if you have the need.
