Linux Media Center

[SPM]

Take a look at this. It seems to blow Windows media center out of the water - especially the network sharing bit - and it is free.

http://wiki.linuxmce.com/
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Screenshots
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4422887272477313460&hl=en

 

[Npl]

the problems with media on linux are two:
1) Format support - quite ugly to get most common formats working and some (WMV9, WMA9) even have no way of beeing played( except you run on x86 and use Windows-codecs).
2) Synchronization - AV runs out of sync often with any player I tried. Seems Linux aint very capable when it comes to this. The various Audio/Video Backends sure dont help either to fix this.

I dont car if theres a sugar-coated UI for handling a media server if the basic functionality is rotten at the bottom.

 

[_xxx_]

I'm not in the know, but I know there are various fixes for the sync problems. As for wmv, I guess pretty much nobody cares. Anyone being able to use Linux will surely be able to convert the files to some more suitable format.

 

[Hector]

WMV9, being almost identical to VC-1 is already playable legally in players like VLC. I don't know if it's already supported in ffmpeg, but if don't I suppose it will be in a short time.

The rest of the common codecs are perfectly well supported (mpeg4, acc, mp3, etc.).

 

[Skrying]

Another MythTV spin off? There are a number of other Linux distros that have performed similar functions for ages now, though none this pretty, so I have a feeling this one will soon become relatively popular if its not buggy.

 

[Zaphod]

I'd welcome a good looking and easy to set up MythTV-centered distro. On the Windows side of things, I vastly prefer MediaPortal to MCE.