LinuxMCE?

I've tried it and its sort of a mess. Unless you're looking to tie a bunch of home automation and PBX services into your media center, stick with the Myth distros out there.

As for file playback problems, what hardware are you using? I'm just going out on a limb here and thinking the reason it works for you under Windows is that you're using GPU acceleration for decoding. Linux doesn't have drivers that will do that so you need a real beefy CPU to handle it. Just from experience, running a 64bit Linux system seems to ease the CPU requirement for decoding by about 10%.

It's funny...we all drooled when we saw that video of just how easy it was supposed to be....I never got it working and I don't know anyone personally who did!
-Trouble

Mythtv should play DVD ISOs directly as that's one of it's output formats for ripping DVDs. The one thing to verify is that iso is a valid extenion for the video manager so it'll pick it up (Setup > Media Settings > Videos Settings > File Types).

Also what's your mplayer command line look when playing the HD content?

One interesting thing I've noticed with HD content is not all HD content is alike. I have 2 similar 1080P/6channel audio matroska format HD content files one only uses 20% of the CPU while another chews up a whole core of an Athlon FX2-62 2..8Ghz dual core and chops badly.

Perhaps you didn't install the mythvideo plugin? Curious that you had to manually create the DB. How did you install myth in Ubuntu? Did you follow any of the guides?

When you do get mythvideo running, make sure it is set to use the "Internal" player for .iso files. That way you'll get DVD menu support.

Go with the Ubuntu Mythtv community documentation for your Ubuntu version:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MythTV

It is by far the most definitive for ubuntu.
It sounds as if you haven't installed the plugins (mythweather, mythdvd, mythvideo (dvd isos and many other files), mythgallery (pictures), mythmusic (music), etc.). I think there may be a meta package "mythplugins" that has the most common plugins. Which ubuntu version are you using? Of course there is always mythbuntu which is tailored ubuntu distro for people who want to install myth (based on 7.10, so if you've already installed 7.10, you don't need to start from scratch with mythbuntu).

If all you are most interested in is playing dvd isos, you could just use VLC or xine from the command line. They play isos (but you won't get any cataloging and organizing features). You could also look into Elisa. Mythtv is overkill for just playing .isos, but you may find you want to use the other features.

I think if your goal is to play HD-DVD and blue-ray then where you started (latest mplayer) is probably what you want. Maybe see what can be done with xine. Probably go to The Doom9 forums if you haven't yet.

The internal myth player is probably only going to be regular DVD support. And then you have to go get libdvdcss someplace else since the distros don't want to distribute it to avoid getting nasty letters from lawyers.

Matter of fact my mythtv distro refers to libdvdcss as "pineapple" in their forums (knoppmyth).

Personally I have been waiting to do what you are doing on my myth setup because my feeling was it wasn't quite there yet. It's been a few months since I last looked, things change fast so maybe you will be able to do what you want.

I use xine in my myth setup and you can sync the audio up. So your 3-7 sync problem should be able to be adjusted. The internal myth player has the capability also so I would expect mplayer does too. I just configured my remote to easily adjust xine when I play a DVD. Even regular DVD audio for me can be off sometimes.

It seems like I shouldn't NEED to do that but at least it's there when I need it.

Please let us know here if you get it working.

Yes, good point, djb61230

What I am describing with myth is for regular dvd .iso. For HDDVD/BluRay .evo files SVN mplayer is your best bet for now... which can be launched from Myth if you want to use myth.

I found LinuxMCE lacks few things
- dvd file listing over networks is pretty unstable, if you make it working, it will not list anything by default, you have do search and then it will list the matched dvd files. I wanted it to display all movie files in once and then as I type search characters, it should filter out unwanted one.
- few of my dvds are getting displayed with black strip on both sides and on top and buttom i.e. the image size was not using my TV's full size. If I burn those ISO File to a DVD and play with my dvd player, everything works ok.
- Some dvd files it plays without audio also some dvd files it plays different language's audio. Again everything is fine, if I burn those .iso files to DVD and play into my DVD player.
- Linux MCE is good for all controller stuffs for your home like lights, PBX, switches. I don't think their main target is MCE, even though it says LinuxMCE

It uses VLC player, I think they are planning to use mplayer. Hope things will be better with mplayer.

Did you guys used GeeXbox ? I found it is very light weight decent file, dvd player. However, it is bad for going through DVD menu. Also you don't have browser so you can't play anything over internet.

I haven't found anything better than XBMC i.e. with Xbox. Here you can play youtube video, you can play .dvd, .iso files over you internal network, play video from stage6, dvix web site

Tie a bunch of home automation and PBX services into your media center good idea.

I think running LinuxMCE in a VM just for the automation stuff is a good idea. It's a bit too finicky for a media frontend, though, IMO.