HTPC Long distance

Some advice on the video card..

Since you are running Linux, buy a Nvidia video card and set it up to run vdpau. If this is just for TV 1080p or less, then something on the order of a GT430 will be more than fine. They can be found for $40-$50 and will do audio/video through HDMI.

Don't waste your money on ATI as this will be heartache. if you ever wanted to add something like MythTV (DVR for TV) you will want Nvidia.

I think you are on the right track. You should be able to run audio through HDMI. It might take a little configuration with some apps and/or pulse/ALSA. Almost all of my machines are setup to serve audio via HDMI to my receivers and TVs.

And yes, go with Nvidia. Intel and ATI have made great strides, but Nvidia still gives the least headache on average. I have old ION and ION2 GPUs and Geforce 210s and even and 8400 and they playback everything I throw at them just fine. TVs are all HD, some 1080p.

Correct, HDMI carries sound and this will be supported on the Nvidia card, so you won't need any sound cards. But what you might want to consider is to forget about the Nvidia card and just buy a Roku media streaming box. It has a nice plex client and works great for streaming from a plex server. No need to run HDMI or IR cables. The Roku is only slightly bigger then a desktop mouse and would probably be a quicker and cleaner solution.

http://www.roku.com/meet-roku

I use this solution to get video to my bedroom TV from my main HTPC...works great and will probably be about the same cost wise when you factor in the graphics card, cables, time etc. Not only that you'll get a bunch of extra's that you don't have with HTPC.

I had a Roku, and found it to be almost worthless. It is only good if you have streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime. For anything else you are limited to whatever channels they want to offer, and usually with very poor/low resolutions. There is a media streaming application, to stream video from your computer, but it is only for Windows, not Linux. I was so disappointed in Roku, that I gave away three of them that I had purchased.

With my HTPC, I can get much more streaming video, including Flash video. And I can watch sporting events vis ESPN3, which the Roku can't do.

Sorry but your wrong big time. Maybe this was true at one time, but I assume your basing your response on outdated information. Runnning Plex Media Server with Plex Media Client on the Roku works great and Plex Media Server is available via most Linux distros. I'm running his configuration today with XBMC and PMS on my HTPC and streaming videos to the Roku remotely at HD quality using the Plex client.

And I have no problem viewing EPSN3 on the Roku via the Plex ESPN3 channel. As a matter of fact, most add ons for XBMC are also available for Plex and work with the Roku since Plex is based on XBMC.

Sure, it was maybe 1 1/2 or 2 years ago.

So, you have to have this Plex running on your PC in order to watch anything worth while. Why bother with the Roku then? A mini-ITX based PC with nVidia ION graphics can to all that and more.

The advantage of Plex with a Roku is that you can loadup Plex on your fileserer (like my headless virtualization server) and then have a small, quiet, low power device (Roku) at each TV. It fits with the OPs requirements. I got a Roku to replace my BD player's flaky Netflix support and fell in love with the Plex integration. The WAF is much better than the HTPC I also had setup.

The roku is great for the what it was designed to play - mpeg4. However still most of our viewing is free local over the air mpeg2 video. Which means that video needs to be transcoded to mpeg4 - most likely in software which just takes too much computing power and time, in my view anyway.

So the roku is great depending on your use case. They could have licensed mpeg2 - it can be added to the pi for $5 - but clearly didn't see the need or want the expense added to every unit.

Yeah a lot has changed in that time with Roku. The main reason I chose Roku was cost, got it on sale for $50 and pretty much provides everything I would have gotten with a PC in a mini-ITX chassis with Plex running on my server.

Plex transcodes formats that are not compatible with the Roku real-time, I've notice no issue with it using it to stream to my Roku and CPU usage is minimal in my case, maybe 50% on a dual core system I have. Also the Plex Media Server and Plex Client are free. Worth the try as their lasted updates will even stream to a webpage now in any computer. Although the quality in a web page stream doesn't seem as good as when streaming to my Roku or Nexus 7 tablet.

OK, I'll bite.

I installed Plex on my PC, and my Samsung TV has a Plex app that I installed. Now how do I get ESPN3 streamed to it?

I'm not sure I'd be happy with the quality of the real-time transcode - I mean if you are happy with the quality thats all that matters. I once ran a "high quality" transcode using ffmpeg that was suggested in the roku forums - the resulting mpeg4 was terrific, but It ran at one frame per second. Obviously an extreme. I did play with handbrake and got something that was reasonable at about 20 frames per second. However overall it's just not worth it to me - I had a box at every TV anyway so I wasn't going to save any money at that point.

I think for fun I'll play with Plex again, so I'm glad you mentioned it.

I haven't used the ESPN3 plugin in awhile, I would suggest the Plex forum...
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/16630-espn3-plugin/page__hl__espn3

From the looks of it, you first have to be a cable subscriber. Then you have to log in to use the app. Why would I watch it on a Roku with some app, if I have cable and can just tune it in?

I don't have cable, and watch ESPN3 on line. Once again a dedicated HTPC is a better option than a Roku. The Plex server doesn't seem to work with my Music folders either.

I have a Samsung TV, and stream videos to it using the Serviio media server. Serviio seems to be the same as Plex, and neither seem to be available through the repositories. Neither seem to work on the TV with music files, just video. If you are streaming to a Samsung DVD player with app capability, either one should work.

I am also running the MediaTomb server. It does much better with music files, and not so good with video. I have my surround sound receiver connected to MediaTomb (it has a LAN connection), and play my music library that way.

Gave Plex and a Roku a run today. Unfortunately my test server hardware is pretty old and couldn't handle transcoding tasks for the roku. But I can see if one had a capable server, was watching on a secondary TV and didn't need the video to be bluray quality, then it would be a decent solution. Funny they don't appear to have a Linux client but I tried it on my mac and it worked nice. No transcoding when doing it this way so no issues.

I looked into the espn360 a little, didn't see it as a channel I could load though.

Just need to go with Myth, if you need any sort of extended functionality. I don't understand using a little bitty computer for an HTPC, with all its glitches, limitations, network interruptions, etc, when a big system can be all but silent in These Modern Times. If you have any doubts, go here.

My HTPC is at least four years old, and still runs perfectly with a 10TB array, right behind me in the home theater. If I were to build a new one I'd definitely find a SuperMicro Mobo with IPMI (for remote admin), and hopefully a built-in nVidia with VDPaU. Maybe there's something newer, but I haven't had to research.

After the Atom CPU was paired with the nVidia "ION" GPU, Intel has kept nVidia from being able to continue this type of product. I had read that Intel had kept nVidia from obtaining the documentation needed to embed a nVidia GPU with the newer Intel CPUs. They have supplied it to AMD, so that is why we see lots of these products. Possibly because nVidia was/is aggressively developing it's Tegra ARM chips, and Intel has been working on it's own HD-3000 graphics. By why include AMD? Don't they pose the same type of competition that nVidia does?

I find that SuperMicro uses almost exclusively the Matrox G200e now, a ten year-old GPU, LOL. A few of their mobos use the ATI ES1000 and cheapo XGI Volari Z7-Z9 (form. SiS & Trident), I'm sure because SuperMicro makes server boards. (Not a single nVidia, I'm sure because they are too proud of them)

So clearly a card would have to be added. This would be OK with me because the onboard GPU could power my case display, and the addon my projector. The addon could be whatever I choose, but it would certainly be a low-power fanless with hardware accel. Hell, my current onboard nVidia GPU chip has been perfectly fine for four years powering both the case display and projector, because of VDPaU.

BUT nVidia has given us open-source types a terrible time, with their insistence on providing just a binary-only driver. Unacceptable. Intel (bless their black hearts) offer support and documentation to open-source devs, and ATI releases at least partial documentation and provides some active development. I want to get away from nVidia if/when I need to upgrade. Screw them. My guide will be whatever hardware accel Myth has built-in.

This is the attitude that I don't understand. If it wasn't for the binary-only firmware blobs. a lot of our hardware wouldn't work with Linux. I am referring to capture cards and wifi chips, not just video cards. I wish nVidia would give us a Linux "binary-only" driver for their Tegra line. Then we could install a real operating system on those devices, instead of the awful Android "pretend" operating system.

Either you are a radical open-source type, or you are not. Some of us stick with Debian for that reason, case closed.

Another difference may be that I have no need for hardware encoding. I record the HD digital stream directly with the R5000, and have no need to re-encode. Of course I do need to decode to view, and this is where I need hardware acceleration.

Since Myth 0.25 it's had support for Freedesktop.org's Video Acceleration API (VAAPI), which enables GPU video decoding on most major video chipsets, and allows for smaller and quieter front-end hardware. The playback stack officially drops support for the older XvMC acceleration scheme (VAAPI accelerates a superset of the decoding steps covered by XvMC), deprecates the libmpeg2 library (in favor of libav), and supports OpenGL ES 2.0 (which again is good news for those looking to build slim-CPU front-ends). Winduhs users, unblessed by VAAPI, can use GPU video decoding via Microsnoft's DirectX Video Acceleration 2 API. Also since 0.25 is support for 3D video for the first time, at least for side-by-side or top-and-bottom frame orderings.

Also, according to the Myth Release Notes:
"Interfacing with modern TV sets and home theater receivers is significantly improved with the addition of support for the Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) protocol; this allows the MythTV box to control TV and component settings over an HDMI cable. Front-ends can also stream media to (and play media from) Apple devices using the Apple-only Airtunes/Airplay protocol, and infrared remote controls can now be used to navigate and control Flash-based web videos.
[MythTV theme chooser]

"There are other features that offer direct benefits on the front-end, such as a "night mode" screen-dimming option, support for rich-text subtitles (e.g., color and bold/italic markup), and a standby screen that lets a back-end restart without hanging or crashing any connected front-ends. A long list of bugs with the on-screen video editor component (which is used for trimming out commercials) was fixed, and there is an equally long list of fixes to the UI theming engine and the suite of default themes."


The rare Guan Yin Blessing Ceremony (Buddhist festival) is starting, so I have to go.

VAAPI actually works? I tried it, maybe 6-8 months ago with the Intel HD graphics, and there was no deinterlacing available. Since I primarily use my MythTV HTPC to record and watch OTA ATSC broadcasts, deinterlacing is a must-have.

I can't speak to 0.26, but it works with nightly 0.27. You have to set the MythTV interface renderer to OpenGL.

Also I read that there were problems with VAAPI on Ubongo 12, but not 11. Not a concern for me.

Deinterlacing too?

If only there were some world wide, you know, 'network' of some kind, where we could easily move around and look for information that we need, kind of like a library...

Why don't you lift a finger and search just a little? I've spoon-fed you enough.

I did actually try using it last year, and there was no deinterlacing. I thought that this being a Help forum, and you claim to be using it, that you could easily just tell me of any improvement in the last six months.

I thought wrong.

Have a nice life, A-hole!