Mediacentre

I’m working to get a small computer to become the media player hub of our home. You’d think it’d be easy these days. I tell you it’s not. But it’s also not impossible. And it’s fun.

Requirements

There are three stakeholders in this project: my wife, my kids and me. There might in fact be four stakeholders, as my son has now shown a different kind of interest in the media box than my daughter. We’ll see.

Wife

My wife wants two things of the media box. She wants it to be dead easy to use (she has a very short temper when it comes to computers) and she wants it to play recorded television shows. When home from work and with the kids in my gentle care, she unwinds watching amerikan soap oprahs like Grey’s Anatomy and re-re-re-re-re-runs of Friends.

Kids

My daughter is seven and knows or can be taught how to use technology. She handles the DVD player fairly well but switching the television on the right input is a bit overkill. In fact, it’s a bit on the complex side anyway. A shortcut to “Select Source –> nav-nav-nav-HDMI3 –> OK” would be nice for anyone.

My son, four, just found an interest in video gaming.

Me

If i ever get access to the television, i’d like to watch a few TED talks and some, uh, torrented TV (hey, it’ll be legal soon anyway).

Hardware

Currently, the media ecosystem consists of one HD television and one Asus Revo R3600 computer which i bought over the ‘net from somewhere in Asia for 182 €. It’s small, quiet, and for better or worse, does not have a DVD player.

Eventually, i’ll get my NSLU2 “Slug” back and running so that my media will be served from a NAS instead of the box itself.

Software

The core OS of the mediabox is Windows 7 (that should surprise some) because i had an Academic licence to run it, and because people still have problems getting sound through HDMI on the Revo. I’ll move to a Proper OS eventually.

The media player software is XBMC, though i’ll probably move to Boxee once the new version is stable and released.

In the meantime, i’ll also need a separate downloader to get TV shows from my TV provider since the current version of XBMC only supports streaming of media over the ‘net. I suppose that’ll change too. (note to self: try gPodder).

Media feeds

The most important media feed i have is TVkaista, a Finnish “PVR on the net” service. It’s promisig but i’ no Hulu. It does not have an API so it can’t be direclty pluggable into, say XBMC or Boxee. There is a plugin to integrate TVkaista with XBMC but it’s a bit buggy…

One fine day…

• i’ll get everything working on UPnP so that i can have my audio player Slug to work as a audio rendering device, remote controllable over UPnP. Right now it uses MDP and SSH…
• i’ll have a proper media library (using TVersity maybe?)
• i’ll control any UPnP media renderer from anywhere in the house — or outside (using Kinsky)
• YLEn Elävä Arkisto will plug into my media ecosystem
• i’ll have a UPnP bridge between me and my mates (using Coherence)
• i’ll have a picture frame on my wall, pulling shots from my Flickr account and showing them (using Coherence) –though a UPnP harware picture frame doesn’t exist yet
• my mom will have a picture frame on her wall, pulling shots of her grandkids, from my Flickr account (using… Coherence

Note to self:

Check out http://www.cidero.com/