My media solution until I really do it up.

I have been alluding to this post for a while, and finally I have something to share that I am at least semi proud of to pipe media into my living room.

Starting with the tasks I hope(d) to perform:
1. Listen to my entire library of lossless/lossy music in the living room.
2. Computer/internet in the living room for photos, video, a good way to access music (itunes) and other stuff, like writing this post.
3. HDTV, Upscale DVD, compressed video.
4. Eliminate Windows from all parts of the system (taken most of the focus lately).

To start, here is a shot of the living room...Wii, PS2 with Guitar Hero controller on the floor, Philips Upscale DVD player with HDMI out, Samsung LN-S4095D 40" 1080p LCD flat panel HDTV, iBook G4 800Mhz running in clamshell mode outputting 1920x1080, an old Onkyo receiver connected utilizing all 2 audio inputs from the TV and the Philips turntable, and finally, Bose 301 bookshelf speakers.



The main audio hub of this setup is the HDTV, taking sound from all connected source (Wii, PS2, DVD, iBook) and going analog to the receiver. An easy way to upgrade this setup would be a new receiver with digital audio inputs, as the HDTV receives and outputs digital audio. The Upscale DVD player is connected via HDMI, Wii and PS2 over component, iBook by d-sub (VGA).

So, to satisfy point number 1 above, I set up a file server that I keep in a closet, and run headless via VNC. To start, this had been a Windows box running iTunes, and served as the main ripper/burner for new CDs entering the house. All of the music kept on this system was encoded in Apple Lossless, and was shared via iTunes DAAP. This kept my mp3/mp4 collection on my iMac separately managed for my iPod and generally makes everything easier to manage. Lately, I got the idea to just share the folder containing all the music in my lossless iTunes library over my network, and add the files to my iBooks iTunes music library. This provides a much more seamless experience, and gives you nice album art coverflow (which you cant do with DAAP shares.)

As I stated, I wanted to eliminate Windows from this system. Finally, it seems I can. With the recent release of Ubuntu 7.04, I downloaded it and loaded it on my main server directly (usually wouldn't do that, but Windows had already shit the bed and needed to be reloaded either way), and with minimal googling had the system up and reading and writing to the NTFS volume loaded with all of my Apple Lossless files (I was NOT going to rip my collection again) and sharing either as SMB or NFS in a few clicks. Honestly, this post will probably turn into more of a free comercial for Ubuntu, which is friggin awesome, especially Feisty. I have been playing with Ubuntu since Dapper, and it has always impressed me as being a general purpose Windows replacement. Now it finally is (as far as my needs are concerned aside from work). Also, since I have this computer running all the time in the closet, I use it for bit torrent, as well as additional NAS.

As far as the iBook goes, it is slow and steady. It can't do cool stuff like Google Earth at 1920x1080 without serious problems. But it can run iTunes and browse the web/You Tube pretty well (the Wii is better/faster in some regards). I really want to be able to use iTunes or Democracy to aggregate and watch video blogs, but for now, video is left to the Philips player.

Using a wireless keyboard and mouse (non bluetooth) is a bit laborious but they work. This job should really be done with a Mac mini, but I am still holding out until they can play 1080p quicktime (at least 2.0Ghz core duo per apple.com).

As I said, video is left to the Philips player. It can play any avi, mpeg, divx video, display jpegs, play mp3 and has a front usb port for jump drives filled with music or pictures. It upscales to 1080i, which looks great, although there have been some DVDs that have looked crappy.

Room for improvement:
1. Wire ethernet to the TV side computer so that I can access video_TS folders using Matinee or buy an external HDD to house the large files.
2. Buy a faster TV side computer that can actually play HD video, front row, DVR?

For now, its a pretty good solution that takes care of most of my needs. It seems that the best solution (until I wire the house or go 802.11n) is cheap CD and DVD media for video, because streaming over 802.11g doesn't work. All told, music is flaky sometimes too, since it is not buffered.

I hope this sparks some ideas to help your media center. Drop a line if you have found anything interesting in your own.