Re: [PLUG] Media Frontend Hardware

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 10:00 AM, Gavin W. Burris <bug@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
> I haven't tried WebM/Theora.  Most of my stuff is a mix of mpeg2 and
> mpeg4 codecs, encoded with mencoder or handbrake.  It seems to play
> everything I've thrown at it very well and in sync, including 720p stuff
> with subtitles.  I'll have to try something in 1080 to see how it does.
>

So, I realize I'm getting into scope-creep in any case.  My original
requirements were for SD support, and now I'm worried about HD support
for unusual codecs.

The dual-core atoms seem pretty powerful, so even if they don't handle
1080p vorbis/etc I'm sure they'll do pretty well.

> I edited /etc/gdm/custom.conf to auto login my htpc user account, which
> starts XBMC fullscreen.

I'd probably be running something pre-packaged so I suspect this won't
be an issue.  If I did a general-purpose build there is a good chance
I'd start with Gentoo to keep the front/back-ends in sync, and I'm
sure I wouldn't have a hard time getting that working.  I most likely
wouldn't start a display manager at all - I'd just launch X and the
application.  Who needs window managers for a media PC?

>
> One hoop I had to jump through... I had to build lirc from scratch to
> get an old irman infrared remote sensor working.  Let me know if you
> need pointers on that.

Doubt it would be an issue - I have an MS remote sensor and I imagine
lirc will handle it fine.  In the very unlikely case that it isn't
supported out-of-the-box I'll let you know.  If I end up on Gentoo
building/patching my own is pretty trivial.

Rich
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