What HTPC OS Do You Use?

WetDaddy

Hi guys, just wondering what OS everyone runs on their HTPCs. I'd set up a poll, but I'm not sure I'd cover all the options, so I think it better to let people type for themselves!

I'm running XP MCE at the moment, but I'd rather try out an Open Source flavour of something. Please post your OS version and what you think the pros / cons of it are...

mathias

Im using Vista home premium 32 bit on my main htpc ,

Pros ,
It will play anything , theres nothing Ive thrown at it so far that it wont play.
Its stable , all the drivers are present now ,
MCE keyboard and remote are the best control options out there at the moment as far as I know.
Album view shows way more on screen than XP mce.

Cons ,
Adding new music and titles can be slow, added a hard drive with 1000 plus albums the other day , took it nearly 2 hours to load all the covers into album view.

EPG can have problems , not too often , but sometimes it loses recordings.


Second HTPC ( experimenting with Myth TV)
http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php
Using Ubuntu Feisty fawn
Pros ,
It looks good , its stable , Ubuntu is a dream to work with .... however ...

Cons
It is a huge amount of work to get everything working and I still dont have all media playing , I still havnt managed to get .mov files playing on it.

You need to be familiar with compiling binaries , and using the command line , Im getting there , but the amount of hours Ive put into it are huge.

Cannot get a decent remote and wireless working on it , I would love to be able to get the MCE remote to work with it , but no joy so far , best Ive been able to do is a logitech wireless keyboard and the creative audigy remote.
I dont like either.

8T8

Windows Vista Media Center on my HTPC

Pro's:
Easy to setup/install.
Excellent codec support through directshow.
Decent plugins for movie database building.
Nice user interface and slick too.
Xbox 360 integration.

Con's;
Hardware requirement is more demanding.
TV tuner drivers can be rough round the edges with new OS.
S3 wakeup problems continue to affect Windows Media Center though personally I've never had an issue.
More limited in features out of the box compared to competing solutions.

Krusty_Clown

Was using XPMCE 2005, then upgraded for a while to Vista, then back'rev'ed to XPMCE2005, due to Vista running like a dog on my system and poor driver support (for the hardware that I have).

Also frequently dabble with Media Portal, installed on top of the above two operating systems.

WetDaddy

Cheers guys. Interesting, most people seem to be running MS MCE based systems. I tried out GeexBox when I was first experimenting, and it worked pretty well.

Curious to see if anyone's gone with LinuxMCE, SageTV or if there are any more reports of MythTV users. I'd like to try out MythBuntu or KnoppMyth at some stage myself, but apart from the cost, I don't really see there being a huge advantage. I'm a little worried about hardware compatibility.

However, XP MCE doesn't look quite as hot. Does anyone have any recommendations on customising it, since it seems so popular?

FYI: My HTPC is running on an Abit F-I90HD. I flashed the BIOS recently and it died a death on me, so I'm awaiting a replacement BIOS chip in the post. Great board, but plagued with BIOS upgrade issues. Onboard HDMI and Optical out too, which is nice... Am considering dumping a load more RAM into it and moving up to Vista MCE (to take advantage of RAM) - Any opinions on that?

SouperComputer

Back in Ireland, most of my setup was with MCE 2005 and Mediaportal. Some of my work was in the area of HTPC/Home Entertainment/Autotmation so I was always experimenting, much to the wife's dismay!

In the US, I've been running FC6 and MythTV. Ill be rolling out Vista MCE and Mediaportal with TV engine in the next couple of weeks.

Curious to see if anyone's gone with LinuxMCE, SageTV or if there are any more reports of MythTV users. I'd like to try out MythBuntu or KnoppMyth at some stage myself, but apart from the cost, I don't really see there being a huge advantage. I'm a little worried about hardware compatibility.

Don't bother with LinuxMCE. It overpromises and underdelivers.

Knoppmyth is a good way to get started with MythTV. Hardware compatibilty as much of an issue as you might expect. Although if your onboard video is ATI then you "might" want to consider straying from Linux for a HTPC.

WetDaddy

SouperComputer wrote:

Some of my work was in the area of HTPC/Home Entertainment/Autotmation so I was always experimenting, much to the wife's dismay!

I'm curious about this... The Home Automation part, not the wife part

Can you recommend any good sites / books on getting started on Home Automation? I mightn't be doing anything soon, but I'd certainly like to start reading about it... One quick question too: What was your core infrastructure, i.e. between devices? Does most HA run on bluetooth? I've heard of this X10 as well, but not sure how that communicates with the actual hardware... Power lines?

adrian.s

So those of you who know me here know I'm a Mythtv fan

I use Ubuntu 7.0.4 on the backend running Mythtv (built directly from the SVN repository). This machine has a modest 500GB disk which is starting to show some limitations now. I currently am using 2 tuner cards, one for NTL the other for the DTT trials. On the frontend I run MiniMyth which is pretty sweet. A Microsoft MCE remote drives the front.

On a stabiliity front, I not entirely convinced by Ubuntu 7.04, although to be fair it's only this particular release that I see lock ups occuring, and these only happen about once every 6 weeks or so. The front end is mostly stable, but at 512MB of RAM I don't think it's enough for it these days. This box is a fanless diskless mini-itx box.

Pros:
It's infinitely flexible
Very powerful scheduling capabilities for recording tv
Commercial Detection
Once up and running, easy to get extra plugins into it
Haven't seen what MCE offers, but Mythweb killer app for me
Intuitive to use and menu layout nice and crisp

Cons:
It's infinitely flexible
Still needs a techie to get it set up and maintained
Can have issues playing DVD's, the default player may not play all DVD's
MythMusic not so good
and this one for all products .... truncated recordings can lead to some serious complaints from other half if it was something important like say.... Holby City!

philologos

Adrian, make sure you have the dvdcss library installed. theres a couple of tutorials on the internet about it.

Calibos

All TV Show (XVid), Photo, Music(Mix of MP3/WMA) content stored on a D-Link DNS 323 with 1.2tb formatted space. All 600+ Dvd's ripped to a mixture of SD res Xvid and H.264 and stored on another Dns 323 with about 800gb of formatted space.

All accessed by 4 original xboxes softmodded with XBMC installed. Plays everything I've thrown at it (At SD res) with a very attractive and user friendly GUI.

Cheap as Chips!!

RuggieBear

is that an xbox in every room type jobbie!?

iuse mce05 and Vista.

just like the guide and remote control. The RC is espicially useful for controlling HD movie menus within power dvd

donspeekinglesh

I use XP Pro as the OS, but use Beyond Media, and Beyond TV.

Pros:
Great DVD library plug-in for BM.
Records straight to MPEG2, and will convert to Divx off peak. (easy to change recording and Divx settings)
Marks where ad breaks are.
Excellent interface in BTV
Built in DVD burning - so can be done using the remote.
Will stream over the internet using VLC
Excellent web interface
Rock solid reliability
Easy to set up

Cons:
BM/BTV not integrated - but two separate programs
Built in DVD software not great - but can be replaced.

Calibos

RuggieBear wrote:

is that an xbox in every room type jobbie!?

iuse mce05 and Vista.

just like the guide and remote control. The RC is espicially useful for controlling HD movie menus within power dvd

Thats it RuggieBear. I've got 4 atm.

mossym

htpc running xp and mediaportal in main cinema room hooked up to projector..

2 xboxes in other rooms, hard modded running xbmc

all music and video on a NAS, can be streamed to every room..

bush doctor

adrian.s wrote:

So those of you who know me here know I'm a Mythtv fan

hey adrian
what mini-itx box (case/motherboard etc) are you using?
how are you connecting the frontend to your cable/satellite decoder?
cheers

adrian.s

bush doctor wrote:

hey adrian
what mini-itx box (case/motherboard etc) are you using?
how are you connecting the frontend to your cable/satellite decoder?
cheers

Howdy,

it's one of these. I just had to buy the ram to go into it. It doesn't actually connect to any decoding equipment, it connects over wired ethernet to the backend. The backend uses a Hauppuage 350 to connect to NTL Analagoue and a Hauppauge 1100 to connect to an aerial for the DTT trial.

Adrian.

stiofanD

Hi guys, only recently came across this HTPC forum...

adrian, just in case you're thinking you're the only Myth person out there, I've also got MythTV up and running at home, although at present its a combined FE/BE on a Gentoo box with a PVR-250. Plan to upgrade the system to a seperate BE and 2 frontends in the near future, as soon as the necessary wires are in!

I must say I find the system to be exceptionally stable, although I recently added a Hauppauge NOVA-T USB2 to the setup to pick up the DTT trial and I find that it fails occasionally and requires me to unplug and replug the usb cable to get it back again.

Black Sky

Windows XP and SageTV (2 tuners) on main PC, 2 x Hauppauge MediaMVP's to two TV's via Ethernet. SageTV Client on another PC as well.

Not a huge TV viewer so mostly used to record sports (F1, MOTD etc)to watch later, or kids to watch their (legit) ripped DVD's. Kids & new DVD = scratched DVD within 2 hours... Started with SageTV 2.2 before MS got in on the act and stuck with it.

A hobby to continually dabble in....

adrian.s

stiofanD wrote:

adrian, just in case you're thinking you're the only Myth person out there, I've also got MythTV up and running at home, although at present its a combined FE/BE on a Gentoo box with a PVR-250. Plan to upgrade the system to a seperate BE and 2 frontends in the near future, as soon as the necessary wires are in!

Good to have some company in here, gets a little lonely sitting by the sidelines watching all those conversations using MCE play out

Good luck on splitting up FE / BE out.... if you need any help drop me a line....

A.