Media center for Linux

I’ve acquired a little hardware box in order to be my next media center. For sure it’s going to be with Linux so I’ve look around to see what’s most mature software.

Almost everybody talks about this software:

  • Xmbc: and I’ve seen running on a older Xbox … it’s simply amazing how fast it is: wow, but get mad if it doesn’t fit your needs
  • Entertainer: a very Gnome solution, it looks fine and it is a full Linux plus this soft, but as far as I look for there’s no Fedora package for it and I fear it does not support every single codec as mplayer does it
  • Elisa: by the moment one of my favourites since it has its own package for Fedora and its website and the whole project looks serious. It’s a plus being a package over my distro and the only but is that it has no TV view posibility on the other hand it has Flickr and Youtube plugins. Elisa has also good documentation.
  • MythTV: it was the first recommended by a colleague but it has no support for directories -everything has to be on a single directory and also I’ve read it is not a good option for absolute beginners, and my media center has to be used by everybody at home.

I’ve try to install a simple Fedora on my hardware unsuccessfully, it seems that SATA support requires to change some option in the bios and besides I terrible fail trying to install a normal Fedora on a 64 bits hardware. So a little bit disappointed with myself I decided to wait ’till today 24 of November since it’s Fedora 10 launching… it looks nice

I’m going to wait until the weekend and have a try on Fedora 10 + Elisa + Sata emulation on bios… too many things on the same time. I hope all flows smoothly.