User:PaulColby

Having been very impressed by the LinuxMCE Video, I have begun playing with my own LinuxMCE system... I will record my rough thoughts and findings here, and move the relevant ones into the appropriate main pages as they become more than just random notes ;)

My LinuxMCE Wiki Bookmarks

Here are some links to pages within this wiki that I like to refer to often, and/or have trouble re-locating when I do want to refer to them.

• Display Drivers
• DVD Install And Custom Partitions

Hardware

Core / Hybrid Server

Component	Model	Notes
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-K8U-939
Graphics Card	Gigabyte GA-622-32C	nVidia TNT2 32MB - supports UI2 (medium)
TV Tuner 1	LifeView FlyVideo 98FM	Works, except for FM tuner.
TV Tuner 2	MachSpeed MachTV	Works, except for FM tuner.

Laputa (MD)

Laputa is my wife's desktop PC, but by disabling the harddrives (via the BIOS), and enabling LAN booting, it makes a decent temporary media director to play with.

Component	Model	Notes
Motherboard	MSI MS-7061	Supports LAN booting
Graphics Card	Asus V8440	nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4400 - so far, have been unable to get UI2 working

Unnamed 1 (MD)

A media director currently in the process of being build out of spare parts. So far, this MD is not capable of faultless playback... it has some obvious frame-drop when streaming DVD ISO's from the server.

Component	Model	Notes
Motherboard	Compaq UWAVE	A Compaq OEM version of the FIC AZ31 motherboard.
CPU	AMD Athlon 1800+ AXDA1800DLT3C	A 1.53GHz processor, underclocked to 1.15GHz (because the motherboard does not support 133MHz FSB).
Graphics Card	Asus TNT2-Vanta rev 1.00	nVidia TNT2 Vanta
Network	3Com 3c905c-tx-m	Managed 10/100 NIC with PXE LAN boot BIOS
Audio	Terratec DMX 1.1, with optional Digital Xtension	Has coaxial and optical in and out... analog works fine out of the box, but I've been unable to get either coaxial or optical out to work - possibly due to a faulty daughter-card though?
DVD Drive	Pioneer DVD-115	16x

Unnamed 2 (MD)

A new media director, destined to be my main home theatre machine.

Component	Model	Notes
Motherboard	MSI MS-7411	AM2.
CPU	AMD Athlon X2 3800+ ADD3800IAA5CU	A special low-power (35W) dual-core Athlon 64.
Graphics Card	Sapphire Radeon HD 4550?	With component (YPbPr) output.
Network		Gigabit.
Audio		S/PDIF
DVD Drive
Case	Silver Lian Li PC-C37	Available late July, 2008?

mini-ITX MD (future)

Like many others, I'd love to use a mini-ITX MD... possibly VIA EPIA based. But searching around the net (and this site), there seems to be no definitive answer to the question of performance. So, I've decided to just go ahead and build one as parts become available... fingers crossed ;)

Motherboard

For a mini-ITX MD, the choice of motherboard is perhaps even more crucial than it is for other MD platforms - mainly because all (or very nearly all) hardware should be built into the motherboard itself.

So, with that in mind, here is a list of things that the mini-ITX motherboard should support (feel free to add suggestions, and/or make comments):

• a CPU - obviously! See the following CPU section below for more details.
• a graphics card with OpenGL support.
• video output - ideally HDMI, or component video, though S-Video at the very least.
• S/PDIF audio output.
• LAN - at least 100MB/s, but 1GB/s would be ideal.
• at least one RS232 communications port to connect to my Onkyo receiver.

Well, that list may well be a pretty tall order for such a tiny board... we shall see.

The MSI MS-7411 looks like an ideal candidate... not sure of its availability, but

• its used in the AMD's "Maui" next-gen Home Cinema Platform (look closely at the second picture).
• some more pics here

CPU

The CPU should be very low power - ideally fanless. So, perhaps one the higher VIA Eden processors?

Scratchpad

Just for testing wiki-formatting...

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