Linux for a Media Center PC?

[Tom_ZeCat]

I'm going to be building a Media Center PC from scratch. I want to be able to record TV and organize my music collection. Does such software exist for Linux?

Are there advantages to having a Media Center PC run under Linux versus Windows XP?

[jclaydon]

Well according to most websites i have visited, it is certainly possible to have a media center pc on linux.

However unless you have used linux before, i would say it might be harder to set up if everything doesn't go flawlessly the first time around *which seems to by my experience with everything I've used linux for*

just my personal opinion.

-James

[The Wise Monkey]

Organising music isn't that difficult, but you might run into some trouble with recording TV.

[choba07]

I run Linux as my secondary OS and as mentioned above there is no trouble playing music on it, but as far as video goes it is pain in the ???. As far as OS goes it is very stable and it is very similar to Windows. (Linux Ubuntu). It is little more secure as far as viruses go. So I guess if you don't mind searching around how to play video and record TV which is possible it is a great OS. I hope that helped.

[bug]

You'll need to install ffmpeg, libavformat and libavcodec to play most media files (including video). Also, you can try enabling the universe repository and then installing gstreamer, gstreamer-plugins-base, gstreamer-plugins-good, gstreamer-plugins-bad, and gstreamer-plugins-ugly. You may need to install w32codecs and libdvdcss (both of questionable legality depending on your location) to watch encrypted dvds and certain proprietary formats. gstreamer is likely already installed; I'm reasonably sure that it is installed as part of Gnome.

Try that and see if videos work better. Is your computer less than ten years old? Any older than that and video quality will not be optimal.

Recording TV is a little harder to set up. You'll need a supporter TV tuner (or video capture card) and a program that will record. Record TV is one such program. You should be able to use anything that can use video4linux and/or bttv.

[Cirndle]

A good audio codecs package is K-Lite package, google it.