Sorry your browser is not supported!

You are using an outdated browser that does not support modern web technologies, in order to use this site please update to a new browser.

Browsers supported include Chrome, FireFox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 10+ or Microsoft Edge.

Geek Culture / building a media centre :)

Author
Message
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 06:12 Edited at: 22nd Aug 2006 06:13
Link
Ive managed to use a G3 350mhz Risc PPC with 384 megs of ram and an ATI 16 meg card as my media centre node.

It works a treat but I had to deploy the VLC player as Quicktime out of the box is not ubeh codec savvy unless you buy a pro licence, so the VLC is a free solution.

wavs and divx and wmvs is why i went VLC

The MC runs 10.3.9 OSX without frontrow (Apples Media Centre Interface like microsofts)

I was streaming King Kong Last night from a rip I did on my original to test it and it was glorious!
I connected the Plasma to the mac via VGA, there is a DVI port ill wrangle with later.

My PIII 933 has just become the back end for all the video and music, streaming to the mac was so easy and still ran fine with one network card at only 10 baseT.

I can have picture in picture or split screen which is what you see in the photos below.

The left side of these pictures is cable tv in australia under foxtel in SVideo.
MY plasma wont allow HDTV on one side and VGA on the other, none to shabby however.
very clear and responsive.

Because I run a unix variant Ive also managed to control the g5 in the other room with the 350mhz MC. woot. still dont have clustering as not all network is 1000bt.

Theres a lot of windows programs that can do this so you could harvest an old pc and do just the same thing here.

even a linux box with a tripy UI would rock!

I built this partly for myself, but now when i bring over clients I can plop them down on the couch and do the promos on the plasma!!!

I have to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse now to complete the illusion.
I have done nothing with the audio, a 7.1 system and an amplifier is down the track but a little way off yet.

I have yet to try a full fps game on this setup as its very early days.

Dont succumb to the next media centre gadgets, build your own one, I know you can. yes you.

anyway heres a couple of photos

Picture 1


Attachments

Login to view attachments
Back to top
Profile PM Email
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 06:12 Edited at: 22nd Aug 2006 06:15
Link
Picture 2


Attachments

Login to view attachments
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Jeku
Moderator
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 4th Jul 2003
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 06:47
Link
That is sweet--- I'm jealous

It would be great to have a media centre hooked up to my HDTV LCD--- just need to convince the wife to let me spend all that money


"I understand creative people. After all, I worked with towel designers." - Ray Kassar, former head of Atari
Back to top
Profile PM Website
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 06:54
Link
just find her favorite shows and copy them to the drive.
then show her how to load them.

perspective on her point of view and your set mate.


I let my gf watch her silly .O.C. marathons, I didnt have to ask first tho, im not married yet.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Nicholas Thompson
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 10:59
Link
Quote: "yet"



[center]
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
SimSmall
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Aug 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 11:17
Link
Quote: "Theres a lot of windows programs that can do this so you could harvest an old pc and do just the same thing here."


Old PC as in Pentium 3 700 MHz?

Nah, me suspects that's not fast enough for a windows environment...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 11:23
Link
that would work as a media centre if the video card was decent.
all you need is to have a mchine that plays things fullscreen.
get them over your network and save having to buy a huge drive.
Im using a 350mhz PPC with a 100mhz bus if that helps.
In fact a pentium3 700 should be fine

Back to top
Profile PM Email
MiR
21
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 13th Jul 2003
Location: Spain
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 12:33
Link
Quote: "Old PC as in Pentium 3 700 MHz? "

I use my xbox as a sort of media center so that should be fine. If you have a 360 and don´t know what to do to your old xbox you could add a chip to your old xbox, install xbox media center and enjoy streamed movies, music and games from any pc on your home network. Only problem is that I can´t upgrade to a wireless network untill they bring out xbox 360 media center. Or maybe even a ps3 version if they drop the price enough.

Need path finding in your games? Have a look at the tutorials on Pathfinding.
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Nicholas Thompson
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 6th Sep 2004
Location: Bognor Regis, UK
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 13:48
Link
a 700 will work fine - in fact, I had an old 300Mhz AMD K6-II and it worked for low res video, but if there were any corrupt bit it went out of sync hugely.

Just chuck a copy of linux on there, grab VLC for linux and you're away!

[center]
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Kentaree
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Oct 2002
Location: Clonmel, Ireland
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 13:55
Link
Quote: "I didnt have to ask first tho, im not married yet"


Heh, if I tried something like that without asking I'd be severely injured

Nice one though, might try this myself

Nephin Games
Devhat Developer Network and IRC Channel
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Fallout
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 14:16 Edited at: 22nd Aug 2006 14:19
Link
Are Media Centers just like PCs, but running a different OS? I've always thought a media center would be cool, but at the moment I have a similar setup. My LCD is also a TV with PiP, so I use my compo as my entertainment center for all music, TV, DVD etc. (I have a couch in my compo room. ). One thing that bugs me though is having to boot it up to watch a DVD, plus the constant background hum of the compo when you're watching a quiet film, or watching it late at night. Do you have the same problems with a Media Center?

Edit: That's definitely the main thing. There is no silence when your compo is switched on. Because I have an external digital tuner and line ins into my audio, I can watch normal digital TV with the compo off. When I finally switch the compo off at night and watch TV for a bit before bed, it's SO much nicer and you really notice the difference.

Back to top
Profile PM
Kenjar
19
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 17th Jun 2005
Location: TGC
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 14:23
Link
I like to move from room to room in my flat, and of cause moving my TV/ Stereo/ Radio/ Internet PC isn't exactly practical. So when I moved in I didn't buy a TV/ Stereo/ Radio/ I just grabbed a decent spec PC which acted as all of the above after I installed a WinTV Nova-T DVB/DAB card. I setup a splitter for the audio and wired speakers in each room. While I couldn't get TV, I could at least start the radio going and play a pre-designed MP3 list.

More recently though, about 2 months ago. I decided to make things more mobile. So I've bought an old Toshiba Satellite Pro 4310 laptop, the 15.4 inch TFT screen is fine to look at.

I then invested in a Thomson SpeedTouch 576 wifi router, and a wifi pcmcia wifi card for the laptop. I purchased a copy of DVBViewer which connected to the Hauppauge WinTV card as an independant viewer or as a server with certain plugin's. Now with a copy of DVBViewer running on my server PC and on my laptop I have a mobile TV source with all the advantages of a main roof top arial, and the portability of a laptop with a USB TV card and poor reception. I can stream any audio/ video file across the network with standard windows folder sharing, and of cause the only wire involved is the laptop power lead.

I've ripped my whole DVD collection onto the server HDD, and encoded them all as XviD so I don't have to worry about swapping DVD's on the server.

I have an AOL account, and rent film downloads from ilovefilms which is the same price as blockbusters, but a heck of a lot cheaper. I look forward to when they expand their service to include more films.

With RealVNC I can still control my server PC in real time, via my old laptop.

All this cost me about £150, which isn't even the price of a fansy TV set (not including the server PC I would have purchased that myself anyway).

The Sony LF-PK1.CEK Location free TV, which does the same job in reguards to TV and radio only, costs £229.99, not including TV's or a laptop to connect.

I think my own system is far better value in the long and short runs. It's easy to setup, and I've experianced no problems. And of cause simply by grabbing a couple more, old, cheap laptops for around £60 - £90 anyone else with the right WEP code can log on and enjoy the same thing. I let my next door neighbour have the WEP for her own laptop, though it only works outside, signal is too weak inside her house.

I lay upon my bed one bright clear night, and gazed upon the distant stars far above, then I thought... where the hell is my roof?
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
Kentaree
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Oct 2002
Location: Clonmel, Ireland
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 14:32
Link
A media center is what you make it. If you have a 700mhz pc with a decent gfx card running DOS with dvd and music player software, it could be classes as a media center

Some operation systems, (like Windows Media Center) are made specifically for these functions so they have adapted interfaces, more codecs etc, but the OS doesnt make the media center

Nephin Games
Devhat Developer Network and IRC Channel
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
SimSmall
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Aug 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 18:17
Link
Well, 700 MHz is what i'm making do with, since I lost my AthlonXP board ( @ 1666 MHz) after 5 years of good service to this summer's heat wave combined with a lack of fans in my room, I'm scraping some money together to replace it.

If I was to follow in indi's steps and make a media centre, it wouldn't be much of a media "centre". A 15" TFT is kinda small for that, wouldn't you think?

But since everyone seems to be saying that 700 is more than good enough, then I might have to look into this, especially when I get the new board...

Quote: "If you have a 700mhz pc with a decent gfx card"


Well, the processor may be crap, but it does have a GeForce 6200 graphics card, so it should be all right in that department...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Kentaree
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Oct 2002
Location: Clonmel, Ireland
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 18:19
Link
700mhz with a 6200 will do perfectly, I remember being able to play DVDs on a 500mhz Most of the work is done by the graphics card

Nephin Games
Devhat Developer Network and IRC Channel
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
SimSmall
20
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 7th Aug 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 22nd Aug 2006 18:22
Link
...Then my other machine should almost certainly be upto the task, but again only limited by the size of the screen - not a problem for my own viewing though...
Back to top
Profile PM Email
Drew G
User Banned
Posted: 24th Aug 2006 07:35
Link
If you really have money to blow, do this:

-Buy surround sound with adolbe digital quality

-HDTV

-Stadium seating

-A DVD-player setup

-security cameras

-And like, every game that's made possible. You'd have the 1337est home theatre setup ever. Even though you are only building a media centre. Just my 2 cents.
Back to top
Profile
Kentaree
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 5th Oct 2002
Location: Clonmel, Ireland
Posted: 24th Aug 2006 12:03
Link
You worry me sometimes Drew...

Nephin Games
Devhat Developer Network and IRC Channel
Back to top
Profile PM Email Website
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 25th Aug 2006 18:05
Link
1000w 7.1 wireless pioneer system is next, probably next weekend.

Interesting to see what people use and what setups they have

no stadium seats here thanks but the cameras are doable from an electronics store.

some boys here forget they wear the pants

Back to top
Profile PM Email
indi
22
Years of Service
User Offline
Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 31st Aug 2006 17:16
Link
Heres and interesting tidbit.

Vista at the moment wont run on a Plasma or HD tv unless you have a special card to prevent copying of the content.

HDCP high def copy protection card.
this card isnt out yet as well.

ahh makes you want to go back to GEOS on the c64 or go OSX, heaven forbid.

Back to top
Profile PM Email
Back to top

Login to post a reply

Server time is: 2024-11-17 13:56:49
Your offset time is: 2024-11-17 13:56:49