HTPC(Home-theater PC) Setup
Here I will document some of the things which I learned during building
an HTPC(Home Theater PC),of course it is GNU/Linux based. I have spent
countless hours to figure these things out and hence I wanted to
document it here so that you won't have to spend time for things which
I already figured out.
OS
My current setup is based on Knoppix
running it from an ISO from my hard drive.The reason I chose this route
as opposed to a full install of Debian is that I prefer my OS to run in
a read-only mode that is my main OS should not change.Running from an
ISO image allows me to keep my OS safe as the ISO never gets
overwritten.The only minor problem with this approach is that on every
reboot you have to perform all the customizations again on your base
OS, but with scripts its a non-issue. I have used this
approach to boot the ISO from
GRUB.
Hardware
PC
($200)
A cheap Dell Dimension 2400 desktop serves as the heart of my
HTPC
project.It has 1GB of RAM and no AGP slot.
It is currently connected to my LCD TV via a VGA cable.
IDE
to USB 2.0 Adapter($13)
Bought this Adapter from ebay for $13 shipped so that I
could
connect
my internal DVD IDE drive to the HTPC desktop.Works fine on
GNU/Linux.Note
that it gets mounted as a scsi drive for example on my machine it is
/dev/scd0
You might wonder why did I buy this considering that I have a desktop
and it can very well go in the desktop.
The main reason I bought this was to increase the FAF(Family Acceptance
Factor) of my HTPC.Now with a long USB cable I just put this DVD drive
over the furniture so that it gives a feel of a
STB(Set-top box).
Generic 2.5"
Hard drive
enclosure(Free-after Rebate)
Dell Dimension has a single bay to hold a single hard
drive.An
additional bracket just to hold an additional hard drive costs
about $30 from Dell, what a ripoff.Anyways I bought these hard drive
enclosures from Fry's which allow me to connect my laptop's 2.5 inch
hard drive as an external USB 2.0 device.Also it is powered by the USB
hub so one less power cord in the house.
HDTV($1200 including tax)
Syntax
37" ÖLEVIA LCD TV
Here is my lines for knoppix in GRUB
title
Knopix DVD TV
kernel
(hd0,0)/boot/knoppix.402/linux ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init
lang=us noapm noacpi nomce quiet
bootfrom=/dev/hda1/*.iso noprompt dma
screen=1280x1024 xvrefresh=60 noddc fb1280x1024
xmodule=i810 home=scan myconf=/dev/hda3 desktop=icewm
initrd
(hd0,0)/boot/knoppix.402/minirt_usb2.gz
boot
I spend lots of hours in configuring these and lots of
reboots
to make this work.The TV just would not display anything correctly.With
the above lines in my GRUB I was able to successfully display 1280x1024
on this TV.I chose to use icewm as it is pretty light-weight and the
startup time is very less compared to KDE.
Also with this TV I noticed that KDE's displayed the title bar pretty
huge and no matter how much I tweaked I was not able to change the
titel bar to the correct size.The whole setup was looking awkward as
rest of the screen except title bar was with proper size.
If you own this TV there is a very good forum
Software
libdvdcss
One of the first things you would need to install on your GNU/Linux
based PC is libdvdcss.This is the software which will decrypt encrypted
DVD's.Without this software you will not be able play any commercial
DVD's.The legality in fair use of this software(especially in USA,
where I live) has not been established.So I would say use it at your
own risk.Pls make sure you get the version 1.2.9 or above.
I spend quite a few days on trying to play encrypted DVD's and due to a
bug in previous versions of libdvdcss I had a very very hard time
playing encrypted DVD's , some would play, some would play only the
first chapter and some wouldn't play at all.
The main problem was that players like Xine were giving me wrong error
messages like "Your computer might be too slow and your graphics card
is dropping frames at a very high rate"
, the error was misleading.
x11vnc
If you are using XFree86 one of the first things you will want to do is
remotely control your htpc.
Now the main challenge will be to share the SAME display on your HDTV
and on your laptop or other computer.
I chose to go with VNC.Now the traditional way of running VNC to
achieve sharing between the display (say for example display 0 ) won't
work.
So what you have to do is run a tool called x11vnc
on your HTPC desktop.You can even download the source code and compile
x11vnc yourself it is very very straightforward.
Once you have x11vnc compiled you can then any user on the HTPC can run
it(you don't need root privileges).Just run "x11vnc -forever" , please
note that by default x11vnc runs passwordless.Once x11vnc runs on the
HTPC you can remotely control the same desktop session via vncviewer
from another machine.
Xine
I use Xine as my media player as that is what is shipped with Knoppix.I
didn't go with other players like mplayer simply because they are not
shipped with Knoppix and if it is not shipped with knoppix in order to
install you would have to install it on RAM(remember my base OS is
read-only) and of course RAM is pretty precious.
Launching xine
xine -p=fd &
I have seen that it is better to refer to your dvd drive
as
/dev/dvd.I have one more cdrom on that machine and by default knoppix
symbolically links /dev/dvd to my /dev/cdrom.So I unlinked the default
/dev/dvd and relinked it to /dev/scd0.
Xine Configuration
changes
Some of the customizations I made to the config files were
- Changed the default volume to 100% so that I can control
the
volume thru the TV
- Changed the default locations of cdrom and vcd for xine to
/dev/dvd
Environment
One of the other things you will notice after setting up your HTPC is
that your screen will go blank say after 15 minutes(or whatever is your
power saver mode time) of non-use.Now when the next time you turn on
the TV you will not see anything or you will see a blank screen.The
reason is that your HTPC has turned the power-saving feature of XFree86
.But power-saving does not make sense considering that the TV is turned
off to begin with.
In order to stop X from going into power saver mode you would need to
run the following commands
xset
s off
xset
-dpms
I use Xine as my media player as that is what is shipped with Knoppix.I
didn't go with other players like mplayer simply because they are not
shipped with Knoppix and if it is not shipped with knoppix in order to
install you would have to install it on RAM(remember my base OS is
read-only) and of course RAM is pretty precious.
TODO
- Be able to remote control PC using a universal Remote
control.
- Be able to control TV through the HTPC.Remote control
transmitter.
- Be able to make the HTPC record shows.Technical challenge
is to
find a card which can decrypt signals from comcast cable and of course
be able to work on GNU/Linux.I haven't found a solution for encrypted
signals.I live in an apartment and hence OTA transmission based cards
are pretty useless for me.I have tried indoor antenna to be connected
to my HDTV but I can barely get 4 DTV signals out of which 2 are
Spanish and 2 are public broadcasting.
- Be able to remote control xine.
- Be able to play albums of photos using a remote control in
slideshow mode.
- Be able to make a lot of playlists.
- be able to make xine understand when a dvd is removed or
put in
so that it can automatically play it without any other interaction just
like in set-top boxes today.
- Buy a cheap PCI based graphics card which has an DVI output
so
that I go completely Digital as far as video is concerned.Can't go
completely digital as far as audio is concerned as the Syntax Olevia
does not have digital audio inputs.
Design Principles
- HAS to work with GNU/Linux
- Preferably USB based.That way in future I can have
a very
light-weight lean desktop(with just 4 connections , 1 for
power
cord, 1 for vga,1 for USB and 1 for audio out) and the rest of the
devices are connected to the USB Hub as opposed to the desktop.
- Preferably USB powered.Less power cords to worry about.
- Has to be low-cost , cheap and affordable.Can't help it I'm
frugal.
- Has to be portable , that means should be able to connect
to any
other machine without too much of reconfiguration.
- High Family Acceptance Factor.Means it has to be simple to
use by
my wife , my in-laws and my parents.
|
|
This site is optimized for open-source/standards compliant browsers like Mozilla.org or Konqueror only.This site may not work with non-standards/proprietary browsers like Internet Explorer.
Disclaimer All the opinions expressed on this site are my personal opinions and not of my employer.
Please use this site responsibly and at your own risk.
