Videos

Watch the new walk-through video that shows all the major features in LinuxMCE (including setup). A full list of the equipment used and a detailed installation description is included.

User Interface

There are 3 UI options. UI1 is the most basic, and runs on all video cards. However, the UI takes over the screen whenever you bring up the menu and any video that is playing gets reduced to a window. This is the easiest UI, because the UI never covers up any of the video. UI2 is preferred because it is completely media-centric. Your media is always full-screen and never reduced. Even when you're not watching your own video or photos, LinuxMCE displays as gallery art the interesting photos of the day from flickr.com with smooth and subtle motion so you always have media full-screen and can leave your TV on as wall art. UI2 is available with masking (medium), which only requires a video card with decent OpenGL and XDamage support. The alpha blending version looks nicer, but it requires a video card that supports the composite extensions, which currently is only the nVidia 6xxx and greater.

Main menu

The main menu lists the top level options for the room in several categories: Lighting, Media, Climate, Media, Telecom, and Security. In the Media Category of UI1, a button labeled "Now Playing" brings up the menus for your active media. In UI2, the "Now Playing" button is in the lower left of the screen; options for your current media (like Audio Tracks, Subtitles, etc.) show up as sub-menus. All options can be accessed in UI2 from a single screen. UI2 allows you to use your remote control, your keyboard arrows, or your mouse to select the pop-up menu and sub-menus.