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milestones and most wanted list

One thing I forgot to do in my last post, which was rather lengthy, was to quickly display a list of ingredients for my perfect multimedia setup, software, hardware or otherwise. Here’s the component list I’ve always wanted … what’s really cool is the milestones I’ve reached along the way, making future progress possible. It’s great stuff to see a dream come true after years of working at it. :)

Milestones

  • Remote control that doesn’t suck. Streamzap USB remote.
  • Nice backend to archive everything: dual-core amd64 box running Gentoo Linux, motherboard with six serial ATA connectors
  • High quality TV tuners: Hauppauge PVR-500 (dual-tuner, MPEG2 hardware encoding).
  • Chapter support, metadata storage: Matroska container format
  • Playback chapter support: MPlayer
  • Playback / resume position: MythTV for TV recordings, mplayer-resume for everything else
  • Automated DVD ripping solution: mplayer, ogmtools, lsdvd, mkvtoolnix, bend

Most Wanted

  • Video browser: MythTV + MythVideo works … needs some tweaks, though.
  • Quiet frontend(s): Mini-ITX with onboard DVI, audio, S/PDIF, USB, network

So, as you can see, I’m pretty close. My issues about MythVideo are minor, there’s just three really small things I would change, I’ll write about them later.

One thing I’d add to the “most wanted” list is a playback / resume option for playlists. For instance, if I’m watching a season series, I don’t want to remember which episode I’m on … I just want to resume watching the shows. Coming up with something shouldn’t be too hard, I just haven’t looked into it yet.

Good times. :)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Gentoo, Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “milestones and most wanted list”

  1. wonder weenie Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 7:42 pm

    I wish I could understand 1/100 of what you do, but I do know it’s impressive. :D

  2. rbu Says:
    September 4th, 2007 at 7:39 am

    When you finished building, please make a copy and send it to me. Thanks!

  3. Wim Says:
    September 5th, 2007 at 1:40 am

    You got MythTV working? I hate that thing by now. The backend is yapping to me about database privileges etc and the frontend doesn’t find the backend, even if it’s started at boot :

  4. Wim Says:
    September 5th, 2007 at 1:41 am

    Seems the bloq software doesn’t handle the smaller than character well…

    Still I’d really like to have what you describe too :).

    By the way, check this out: http://www.bcmcom.com/bcm_product_mx965gme.htm. It has HDMI for 1080p!

  5. Bert Says:
    September 5th, 2007 at 2:13 am

    Thanks for the post! I was looking for a remote like the Streamzap USB for quite a while. Will try it.

  6. Jason Says:
    September 6th, 2007 at 12:21 am

    I can attest to what Steve is trying to do - and that it’s possible.

    I currently have mythTv set up in my basement home-theater with a projected image of 106″, containing my collection of 120+ DVDs. It also has HD-TV capability (thanks, Steve), and holds all my music, digital camera pictures, movies, and TV shows. It also acts like my Tivo, thanks to zap2it (which expired like… a week ago.)… So, anyway…

    To those doubters, I say, “Yes, it can be done, because I’ve been doing it for 2 years now”. Keep at it.

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