When my DVD player stopped working, I definitively proved to myself (and to people I know) that if there is a simple and effective solution to a problem and a complex one which promises unpredictable results, I always choose the second option. Instead of buying a new DVD/DivX/MP3 player for the modest price of $40-50, I decided to build a home-made device that would allow me to record the TV, receive podcasts, view webtv, play games, and a lot of other things that I considered cool. So my modest adventure with Freevo, GNU/Linux and a lot other free software begins…

Introduction

A media center is a special type of computer conceived for your living room rather than for your office. There are several models of media center available on the market and most of them are based on the Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition. Differently from a traditional personal computer, the interaction with a media center mainly flows through the remote control and the television screen. It is of course possible to add a wireless keyboard for writing text but most of the time a media center is used by one or more users enjoying content from separate sources such as DVD, Video CD, digital video cameras, FM radio, analog/digital terrestrial TV or satellite TV, network streaming and, of course, the local hard disk.

Differently from a traditional personal computer, the interaction with a media center mainly flows through the remote control and the television screen

What hardware you need

Assuming you want to build your own media center, the ingredients you need are of three types: hardware, software and connectivity. Your media center will gain a lot from a LAN connection which is useful for management tasks and for receiving media streams from the internet. Regarding the hardware the essential components are: motherboard, CPU, RAM, disk, video card with TV/OUT, audio card, TV/FM card, network card, CD/DVD player and a remote control with IR receiver. Of course you can add a lot of optional components like a DVD writer and USB memory readers.

To build an effective system you need a minimum CPU power for video encoding/decoding. Buying an Intel Core Duo with 2GB of RAM is a viable choice, but in my experience you can save a lot of money reusing some old hardware. I’ve assembled a system with Pentium III processor with 320MB of RAM and I found that for video encoding/decoding this configuration is powerful enough. If you don’t have any old PC to cannibalize, you can buy a mobo/CPU/RAM for less than 100$ on eBay and get your system done.

I’ve assembled a system with Pentium III processor with 320MB of RAM and I found that for video encoding/decoding this configuration is powerful enough

GNU/Linux helps to make your old hardware run again. It’s always possible to optimize GNU/Linux, while Windows XP is too resource consuming. Another proprietary alternative for old hardware is, as usual, Windows 98, but would you venture to make it your OS? I wouldn’t. Thus, for my media center I’ve acquired the following:

• Microstar mother board with Intel P3/800MHz
• 320MB of RAM
• Matrox Millennium graphics card G400 with dual head
• A DVD/CD combo player
• A PCI network card 10/100

I also added some special purpose components for the media center:

• Technisat TS35 Remote control with IR receiver
• Hauppauge WinTV GO tuning card

The distro the kernel and the screen

Inside the galaxy of GNU/Linux I have chosen Fedora. The reasons behind this choice are absolutely disputable: my first Linux installation was a Red Hat 4 and I’m too lazy to evaluate other distros. About the screen, unless you want to buy a 26” VGA LCD you need to use your TV. Driving the TV out from the Linux kernel may cause some problems. First, you need a video card with TV out (this is obvious); second you need to activate the TV-out function in Linux (not so simple). After some searches on the net I discovered that among old cards, the Matrox Millennium G400 TV out setup is well documented. To use the G400 with TV out I needed three main tools:

• kernel sources to be recompiled (sigh)
• fbset
• matroxset

The TV out can be activated using the framebuffer device, and for this reason I needed to recompile the kernel. Recompiling the kernel is not a difficult task, but making the wrong changes in the configuration can cause your machine to become unbootable. This is not irreversible, because you can always reconfigure the system to boot from an older kernel, but this recovery may require some knowledge. Please refer to online documentation. In my kernel compilation I needed the followings settings:

• Code maturity level options→Prompt for development…
• Processor type and features→MTRR support
• Character Devices→I2C support→I2C support
• Character Devices→I2C support→I2C bit-banging interfaces
• Character Devices→I2C support→I2C device interface
• Character Devices→Matrox g200/g400
• Console drivers→Frame-buffer support→Support for frame buffer devices
• Console drivers→Frame-buffer support→Matrox acceleration
• Console drivers→Frame-buffer support→G100/G200/G400/G450 support
• Console drivers→Frame-buffer support→Matrox I2C support
• Console drivers→Frame-buffer support→G400 second head support