another n00b with n00b questions

[dmccabe]

Without wanting to annoy those that see these questions all the time, here they are anyways.

I have been interested in getting myself in to this whole Media Centre controlled house type of thing, but after watching the Linux MCE demo video was quickly persuaded to look at Linux MCE instead of Windows MCE.

I am noob to Linux (some fiddling with Red Hat but thats it), but I have been assured that MCE is noob friendly.

The box I am wanting to set up initially will be for the following:

- DVD Player & Recorder
- MP3/Music Player
- Freeview
- Sky+ style feature (pause live telly, rewind etc)

So my questions are:

a) Is the Sky+ style features possible? What is needed?
b) For the freeview do I need to have a special TV card or how does that work?
c) Is there a list of compatible/recomended hardware?

Thanks for helping yet another noob

[DeadPenguin]

I will be real honest I live in the states and I am not familiar with SKY+.
I am pretty sure if it works with mythtv it should be able to work in LinuxMCE.
That being said here is an article I found googling "mythtv SKY+"
http://www.heenan.me.uk/control-sky-from-pc/
The list of supported hardware is somewhat lacking. But can be found here:
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Category:Hardware

[sharlee_angelo]

if you have a dvb external receiver it should be very easy to make it work with LMCE. you will need only a tv card which will receive the signal from the dvb receiver.

[dmccabe]

Thanks for the hardware list that will come in real useful.

I did however forget the internet is not limited to my own country lol (my apologies)

Let me explain a bit.

I am not wanting to control Sky+ or even watch Sky+ from LinuxMCE, what I am wanting to do is have some of the features that Sky+ has on my LinuxMCE box.

These features are bascially the ability to pause live television, rewind to review earlier programs.   This is done on Sky+ by it constantly recording the input it is getting and then displaying it to you in a time lag, so that you can rewind to a program that may have been on earlier that day.

So basically I am after the ability to add freeview to my LinuxMCE box then have it recorded constantly so I can reqind "live" tv so to speak.

[DeadPenguin]

Sorry I misunderstood.
Mythtv can pause/rewind live tv. Its in the features here: http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures

Similar question asked in this forum here:
http://forum.linuxmce.com/index.php?topic=1484.0
Another about the dvb card:
http://forum.linuxmce.com/index.php?topic=1579.0

There are more just search here for stuff like "freeview" "dvb"
Google also "mythtv UK freeview" "Mythtv freeview"

Regards,
Blair

[dmccabe]

Thanks Blair,  I will do a bit more reading now.

For someone who is not a Linux user and has never used a Media PC before, any useful pointers, tips or documents I should be reading?

(am reading the MythTV pages now )

[DeadPenguin]

I think Linux has made great strides in being more user friendly over the past few years. The Linux distro that LinuxMCE installs on/over is a very widely used and user supported friendly distro Kubuntu. linuxMCE/PlutoHome tried making it as simple as possible to get installed and running. The problem is getting the hardware to cooperate with Linux. If you are not a novice or > computer user that is willing to do alot of reading/asking questions/troubleshooting I am not sure if this is right for you. But for what you could do with this setup it is definitely worth the time and trouble it might take to set up (for me at least) 

Who knows, with the way things are going alot of the cool Linux projects have been made easier to install and use over the years. (see. KnoppMyth - Asterisk@Home/Trixbox) I think I would like to see one day a cd that came with a distro and LinuxMCE on one disc that any user could drop into his/her core core/hybrid and start the livecd and have an install LinuxMCE on the desktop.  Click on the button and it walks you throught the whole install with an anaconda like installer for the distro and LinuxMCE itself and having all of the possible needed (available) drivers already there on the CD that would be installed as hardware is automatically recognized during install.

I have not setup a LinuxMCE system yet. I am still getting the core pieces together. The LinuxMCE google video has provided me the needed boost to get going on this.

The forum here is very helpful. Kubuntu forum is helpful.  As far as reading there are a million linux related docs to read. I am not sure there is one that sticks out as a good beginner one to read. You could check out RUTE http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz I think its a good entry level linux book.

They have made Kubuntu so GUI based and easy is should only be a small learning curve if you are used to MS or Apple OS.  If you are reading about Mythtv also check out the telephony part of this MCE Asterisk http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Asterisk

Good Luck.

Blair