[ILUG] Home Entertainment server rant!

[Ronny Bangsund]

--- John Gay <John_Gay at eur.3com.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> As some of you know, I've been working my way up the Linux
> learning curve. I've
We can never stop learning with all this progress :)

> Of course I'll be wiring it for a network, with 2-4 RJ45
> jacks in each room.
> This allows both networking PLUS phone capability anywhere.
This is something I've gotta try. Wonder if the landlady will
approve? Does she prefer flowers or chocolate as bribes?
Hmm...

> Home Entertainment Server!!!
Oooh! I like those buzzwords!

> Basically, a PC with AGP and IRdA. Put in a Massive video
> card with video or
> SCART output. Use the TV for the monitor, connect the sound
> to the stereo.
We would need some code to output a TV signal, or maybe the
YAX project could do with some code to make it output signals
through some video card? (See yax.netpedia.net - the guy's in
the military, so development is on hold, but it's already a
working alternative to X11, if you just need a GUI)

> Personal music and movies can be stored on Hard drive
> somewhere in the LAN. A
> TV/Radio card as well. The Killer App would be a really nice
I'd like to have a tool to mpeg the sound output from either
source, just to grab the news.

> project. Menu selection to choose
> TV/Video/Satellite/Cable/Stereo/Personal
> Library. Maybe this could even work with Digital TV. Movies
> and Music could be
> organised by Type, Artist, Family member etc. . . Personal
> music and videos
* One DVD (for movies)
* One CD-ROM (for music)
Why both? Well, put a 100 CD changer-mechanism on each!
(Gosh, this is starting to sound geeky...)

One problem: Lack of DVD support for Linux. For now.
(Yeah, I know Stradis, Inc. have some cards, but what software
is there to *decode* the DVDs?)

> could be digitised at home for easier selection. Get a new
> CD, pop it in and
> record mp3's as you play it the first time. No more digging
> through the CD
> collection, just pick the song title and artist. Same idea
> for videos. This
I could actually produce some code to do this, provided I got
autofs (or whatever) to auto-detect when a CD is inserted.
Of course, I could create a frontend that doesn't rely on X,
checks for CDs every so often and does whatever's necessary.

> some games? don't start pulling wires to set-up the
> playstation or N64, just
> fire up a game of Quake, Doom or Tomb Raider right there on
> your 28" TV! For
Port UltraHLE to Linux? :)
It would mean more games!

> other ideas that could be incorporated; Security monitoring,
> caller ID display,
I still think spying and caller IQ sound like better ideas :)

> for a motherboard that meets the basic requirements. If some
> programming types
How many of us programmers are there around here?
I could possibly volunteer to tie together cdparanoia/LAME to
automatically rip music.

> want to have a go at some kind of GUI, and some sys-admin
> types can start
> stripping down a Linux distribution for the absolute bare
> minimum to boot and
> run as an X-Terminal.
We could use a diskbased distribution, but put it on the HD,
and leave the rest for media storage.

> So, let me know what you think.
Cool ideas. Not all is entirely feasible (DVD thing), but I'm
sure some of us would be crazy enough to try :)

O- nny, hyperactive

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