[clue] HTPC systems?

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Fri, 2012-07-06 at 14:44 -0600, Sean Leblanc wrote:
> Anyone out there that has built - or bought - HTPC systems?

I build my own out of off-the-shelf desktop computer equipment.
> 
> Anyone have hardware/software to recommend? I'd like to use some
> flavor of Linux, and I know for sure I'd want to run MAME and other
> emulators on it. 

I don't play games so can't speak for MAME.  I use Fedora for my HTPC in
my living room.  It's actually running Fedora 14, though I'll have to
update it soon since the primary disk is apparently dying.
> 
> I think I'd also like to use MythTV as a front-end and probably XBMC,
> maybe, too? The typical use case would be playing video files. 

I used to use MythTV because I could get TV with it using my cable
provider.  The switch to Digital TV changed things and I dropped my
cable TV (keeping only cable Internet).  So I don't use MythTV anymore.
Just XBMC to play ripped DVDs (as ISO files) and Hulu and Firefox for
streaming from the web.
> 
> I'm a little out of touch on which flavor of Linux might be the "best"
> fit for this, though. I need something that doesn't require much fuss,
> but doesn't have too much cruft slowing it down, either...

Best is subjective.  Ubuntu annoys me.  Fedora is annoying me more and
more these days.  CentOS has given me fits getting multimedia apps but
maybe I'm must not using RPMFusion with it correctly.  I've started a
project (BeagleBox) to build my own distro for a small ARM board
(BeagleBoard) so I could dump the other distros.  But its a long, slow
process.  I could probably do the same thing for an Intel platform much
easier, but the ARM boards are more fun (and cheaper) to play with right
now.

Essentially, pick a distro - any distro.  Dump KDE and GNOME and install
LXDE or XFce.  The former is very light weight and should support GNOME
apps.  The latter is heavier, but still much lighter than GNOME.  Then
run your media apps just like on your desktop.

The HTPC should probably have HDMI output since most TVs these days
support that.  If not, you may need VGA or DVI output, depending on what
your TV needs.

Processor:  single core will work fine if you have a supported video
adapter than can do OpenGL (XBMC wants that).  Video acceleration for
video playback is necessary with a single core.  A quad core pushed to
its utmost will do fine with software decoding for SD.  Not sure about
HD.  We have HD playback of, for example, the Daily Show.  I have a
GeForce 9800 GT using the nVidia drivers (not the open source one) and a
dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor.  

I can't remember how I plugged in audio - I think its just stereo
plugged into the TV, or maybe into the Tape input of the stereo system
connected to the surround speakers.  I'm not an audio junkie, so any
sound is fine for me.  I don't play music on my HTPC though the media
server providing the video files also stores our music files which we
play on our desktops.

The HTPC mounts the video files from the media server over NFS via a
802.11g wireless connection.  Works fine for streaming those files and
streaming the HD from the web.  I actually have two routers - one for
the HTPC and the other for the rest of the computers in the house,
though one of those is problematic and now I think I have a mix of usage
on the two routers.

The HTPC has a small driver - 40G, I think.  You just need the OS and
supporting files.  That's why a 2GB SD card will be the hard disk in
BeagleBox.  If I can ever get that working.

To summarize: if you can plug it into your TV, it's an HTPC.  Smaller is
better, cuz it gets hot behind that TV.  

Hope that helps.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>