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what flavor for an internet tv box?

T

TheInternal

Senior member
Hey all,

Windows 7 is turning out to be too much of a resource hog for an old pentium 4 2.53GHz / 1 GB RAM / Geforce 6800 GT system I had sitting around, so I'm curious which linux distro I should get for a streaming internet tv box. The box has a tv tuner in it that MIGHT be hooked up to an antenna. It will mainly be used by my folks for netflix and hulu. I need it to work with a remote.
Any suggestions would be great. I'm not a linux expert, but have a little experience with ubuntu, and liked the OS in general.
 
use xbmc live edition. you won't get anything like windows media center (it's THAT good) for free on *nix/mac.

so i'd just buck up and send that $20 box to the garbage and builda crapbox itx device for $200 that will last for the next 5 years as a media center and play two 4K video streams in 3D at once if you want to in the next 5 years. do it once do it right.

win7 does really need more than 1gb and that video card is teh suck. fixing those two things would probably fix all the problems you are having
 
Your reply was a little bit confusing, since I mentioned the hardware I was planning to use... and xmbc doesn't have support for netflix or hulu, which I mentioned in my original post.

I have a budget of $0, and lots of older hardware sitting around, some of which is fully functional (like a few Athlon XP processors, socket A motherboards, and this old HP).

I'm leaning towards Ubuntu with Boxee at the moment from my own limited research. A 2.53GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM should be WAY more than needed to stream any video from the net to an s-video output and onto a TV.
 
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and what free tv guide are you going to power it with? microsoft is giving you a free tv guide for free with media center. is boxee?
 
TheInternal said:
I'm leaning towards Ubuntu with Boxee at the moment from my own limited research. A 2.53GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM should be WAY more than needed to stream any video from the net to an s-video output and onto a TV.
Click to expand...

Not really. If you want to watch it full-screen, you're going to need more horsepower. Either a new video card with hardware decode acceleration, or an upgrade to a dual-core CPU.
 
The correct answer is none. Why? Because Netflix and Hulu only work on Windows due to the Silverlight requirement
 
VirtualLarry said:
Not really. If you want to watch it full-screen, you're going to need more horsepower. Either a new video card with hardware decode acceleration, or an upgrade to a dual-core CPU.
Click to expand...

He said S-video. That's 480i; a 2.5GHZ P4 is more than adequate for that.
 
Hulu works for me just fine..... Netflix does not though. Which is corporation BS @work they have it working on boxee
 
Khyron320 said:
Hulu works for me just fine..... Netflix does not though. Which is corporation BS @work they have it working on boxee
Click to expand...

Apparently the Boxee Linux client does not support Netflix. From that page:

When I saw Boxee supported Netflix I ran and signed up for an account as quick as I could - HOW COOL!

Now I see Linux users are left out of the loop, and my boxee client happens to be sitting very proudly on a Linux Mint installation. HOW COLD!

Do you see support in the future for Netflix service on the Linux side of life, where I choose to live?

Thanks for a nearly totally cool project 🙂 You all are great!
Dec-10 2010 16:39.
Click to expand...

I am disappointed that Netflix does not support Linux. One of the reasons that I wanted a Boxee Box was the strong endorsement given by the Linux Journal.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1521549

The link above will take you to a discussion about this issue. It appears that the only way is to install Windows on a VM.
Dec-26 2010 12:02.
Click to expand...
 
jhu said:
The correct answer is none. Why? Because Netflix and Hulu only work on Windows due to the Silverlight requirement
Click to expand...
It is pure horsepoop as well, since they now have TV's with built in netflix. No windows OS or silverlight there.
 
skyking said:
It is pure horsepoop as well, since they now have TV's with built in netflix. No windows OS or silverlight there.
Click to expand...

You missed the part where the OP has a budget of $0 for what he wants to do. So if you can get Netflix to work natively under Ubuntu, then please let us know.
 
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