Enjoying your media in the living room
Posted by Jesper | Filed under Featured, Life, Movies, Technology
Back in the day, I used to have an old Xbox v1. It was modded to enable it to run Xbox Media Center, the best mediasolution I’ve ever seen. It played EVERYTHING I threw at it, no questions asked.
However, when my old standard-definition TV was dying, I wanted to upgrade to a new, shiny LCD TV, and so I did. Back then, it didn’t matter as much, as HD content really wasn’t that popular yet, and the display of SD content on the TV was rather acceptable.
Now, some years later, I recently had a small batch of money, and therefore decided to retire the, now old, LG 32″ TV, and get a brand-sparkling-new 47″ LED version instead. Now doing that was one thing, but I really wanted to upgrade my mediacenter as well. My initial thought, being the Apple-fanboy that I am, was to get a Mac Mini, and hack that like a madman. However, I knew that the advancements within “nettops” (Small desktop computers based on the lowpower netbook cpu’s) meant that you could get a similar sized PC at half the price of the Mini (And using less power too, something quite important in these global warming times ;) ).
Anyway, these were the primary requirements for my new system:
Should be able to handle most formats
Should be able to handle full-HD playback
Should be able to stream from the NAS in the home office without lag
Should be easy to manage
So, I ended up getting a AsRock ION 330HT , a model very popular among XBMC fans. It’s small, uses the Nvidia ION platform (capable of running full-HD without straining the CPU), has HDMI out, has eSATA, 6 USB ports and even a VGA port if you’re using an old screen for the initial setup. Oh, and it has built-in IR-receiver and a remote to go along with it, so you don’t need an external (read: Ugly) receiver!
There’s a lot of different setups outthere, and other producers are becoming as popular as the AsRock. Shuttle has new models coming out at the moment, Acer etc. are also in the race for the living room with smaller, more friendly devices (No more large PC enclosures in the living room, along with fan noise, woohoo!), so better alternatives might already be available. I just suggest having a look at the XBMC Forum before buying anything.
The initial setup
This took me some trial and error, but it will be worth it in the end, as the final system works excellently. Don’t expect everything to work after 5 mins. though, so if you have no patience, or dislike reading and/or troubleshooting, doing this setup may not be for you.
Anyway: First up, get a minimal version of Ubuntu 32 or 64 bit. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD should provide you with download links. You’d want Karmic Koala, as that’s suggested as the most stable atm, when running XBMC. To not have to use a CD for the minimal install (It’s only 12MB), I use UNetbootin to create a bootable USB drive.
Now boot the machine from the USB key, and run through the Ubuntu install. You’d probably want to partition your main drive with one of the default setups, that create 3 partitions (root, home and swap). This is an advantage, as it allows you to store all your media within /home and not have it deleted if/when you reinstall your HTPC.
Furthermore, when the installer asks you to select packages to install, you’d want to select the “Basic Ubuntu Server” and “OpenSSH Server”, to install only the basics, and allow for SSH access to the machine later on (Makes maintenance somewhat easier when the machine is finally located below your TV).
Finally, create a user named “xbmc”. This user will run the actual software, own all the mediafiles etc.
Installing the basics
Assuming you’ve finished the Ubuntu setup, log on as root (using the password you setup in the initial install), and do the following:
[shell]visudo[/shell]
Now after the line containing “root”, add the following:
[shell]xbmc ALL=(ALL) ALL[/shell]
This allows the xbmc user to use the sudo command for all commands. Now logout of the root account, and log in as xbmc. Here’s the fun part: A couple of XBMC users has decided to gather all of the guides, howtos etc. in one simple installer, that simply allows you to run their installer instead of having to install XBMC, graphic drivers etc. manually.
I use this to setup my AsRock box, as it’s able to fix graphic drivers and HD acceleration, setup my remote, setup audio over HDMI, setup XBMC and make everything boot up when starting the machine, without having to manually change anything. Simply put, when the basic system is installed and this script is run, XBMC should just be ready to take on everything you throw at it.
Anyway, to run the installer, type the following as the xbmc user:
[shell]wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/xci/files/Release/xci.sh/download
chmod +x xci.sh; sudo ./xci.sh[/shell]
And follow the onscreen instructions, to install XBMC stable and whatever you may need. Now you should be done! To get mediafiles onto your new mediacenter, try SFTP’ing a couple of files over to test. In the longer run you may want to setup Samba shares or setup NFS on the machine, to make it easier, but that’s a story for another day ;)
November 9th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I used to have a MacMini and used it as a media centre. However it wasn’t long before I realised that it was a pain in the bum to have to use a keyboard and mouse (it was pre the apple remote). Plus it wasn’t really ‘wife proof’. She basically wouldn’t use it.
So I recently got hold of a WD TV Live and have a network drive full of tv shows and movies. It works brilliantly and supports 1080p.
There’s been a lot of talk recently though about the Boxee Box (coming soon to DK). I’ve installed Boxee on my MacBook Pro and have to say that it’s a pretty slick interface. Really nice in fact. It recognised all the content on my network drive and even shows the artwork plus a synopsis of the film/show.
So even though I’m happy with what I’ve got, I’m tempted to get the Boxee Box when it comes out in the next few days!