Total Linux noob - looking for MC suggestions

[crazylegs]

Hey all I'll admit it i'm a total Linux noob - hardly ever touched it at all. However, I work in IT (mostly hardware building systems etc) and know my way around most flavours of windows pretty well.

I've decided to start 'playing' with Linux - having a Mdia Centre Box in mind.

I'm in the inital research phase and hate to re-invent the wheel so am looking for some suggestions. I'd like to be able to watch / record live TV, stream net vids, store music, movies, pictures and maybe some web browsing - pretty standard requirements from a MC box i guess.

I'm open to any suggestions as to which linux distribution to use (Ubuntu is the obvious choice, but heard some issues with the latest release?) and which MC suite to go for. Have seen XBMC mentioned inother threads but not sure about its TV recording capabilities?

As far as hardware goes i'm tempted by the Zotac ZBOX HD-ID11, or something along the ION lines. If not i'd probably go for a SFF self build. But the price of some of these out of the box mini-itx systems is pretty good!

Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions

 

[Jodell88]

Myth TV should be suitable for what you are looking for. There are linux distros focused on Myth TV but I will recommend Mythbuntu as the first distro of choice. Check it out and see if you like it. The best thing about most distros is that they can be run from the cd so you don't have to touch your hard drive

 

[crazylegs]

Kool - i was thinking about trying MythTV, but installing it on top of a diferent Linux distro. Will give Mythbuntu a shot. Luckily i have a few spare PCs lying around, will install it on one of those and have a play

 

[Paperlantern]

This looks amazing. I will definitly have to look into this as well, I have an old Dual core IBM Thinkcentre thats fairly small that I can use for this. How is the compatabiity? The only TV card i have is an old PCI ATI TV Wonder from roughly 2003 or 2004, will this maybe work? I know the card is still good, i'm just not sure how good the choice to use it in a MythTV system would be.

Also, I hate to hijack the thread, and I don't mean to, so i'm sorry if this kind of does, but do you guys have any recommendations for cheap but well to do USB remotes that work well with MythTV?

 

[crazylegs]

I'm pretty much starting from scratch - so info on any aspect is appreciated and your question was a good one. I had a brief search but couldn't find anything much on these forums... will hit google when i'm home from work. Was wondering if there are any stickies or places to look for basic info concerning Linux MC setups?

Best of my knowledge is that ATI drivers are patchy on Linux... From my personal experience TV Tuners are not the smoothest of components to install drivers for and configue under a MC environment :/

Thanks again all.

 

[Paperlantern]

Yeah I kind of figured the TV Wonder might be a bad choice for a tuner card in Linux. Though I perused the MythTV website and am VERY impressed. Its BASICALLY a DVR box you could get from any cable company, just... WAY better looking with the ability to play media from network shares. I'm very intrigued by this and will probably install a copy sometime this week to a spare machine I have laying around and check it out.

 

[Jodell88]

This should point you guys in the right direction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythTV