Media Player Box for my TV

[bfauska]

The search for a frontend in the HTPC is more complex than here so be ready for some research to find the best one for your needs. I used to be fairly into Xlobby, I just sort of lost momentum and interest on my home theater a while ago and they started to get ready to go commercial.  It may still be worth looking into, otherwise you could take a look at the HTPC section of the avsforums.

Xlobby takes a good deal of work to set-up but there is still a free version available I think.  The HTPC forum may be daunting, but it should be good info.  Any of the front ends have good forums themselves, but in order to choose one you have to start somewhere.

[shmokes]

You do know that you are liable for all net activity through your contracted connection?  If that person had chosen to use your connection to do something really illegal, like distribute child porn, or send out threatening emails to public officials, it would have been your ass in a sling, not his, until you could specifically prove both that it was a third party and exactly who it was.

I don't think that's really true.  I wouldn't be liable until I proved it wasn't me, so much as I might be suspected until they failed to prove that it was.  I can see it causing a great big inconvenience in a worst-case scenario where someone was downloading child porn or something, but what are the chances of that happening, really?  And in the end they would subject all my hard drives to data forensics, would find that they couldn't turn up a single instance of child porn, and that would be that.  It would be VERY inconvenient and stressful, but it'd all be over and then I'm sure I'd never let anyone else ever use my internet connection. 

But  I just can't be bothered to allow something like that to have a great deal of influence over my daily behavior.  It's the same reason I refuse to watch the news.  I think television news has turned into something very unhealthy.  It causes people to be afraid of life.  I live in a quiet neighborhood -- Coral Gables, FL.  I had ONE trick-or-treater this year.  ONE!  And it was my next-door neighbor!  Depressing.  People are convinced that the world they see on the 10:00 news is something real, rather than a manufactured product that contains lots of sex and violence for the same reason anything on TV does -- because it sells.

[boykster]

Whether or not you are legally liable or not, your service provider has every right to drop you for abuse of service.  If someone is using your wifi and violates your TOS with your provider, they have every right to cancel your account.  Trust me, I know, it almost happened to me.

As for HTPC frontends, there are tons of options.  I use Mainlobby/DVDLobby but its highly tweaked (custom backend and IR interface).  Your mobo may have an IRDA header, but that's not going to get you much in the way of IR input for control.  You'll need an IR interface that is supported by the frontend you choose as well as supports consumer IR remotes.  usb-uirt is definately a good choice.

Its a big can of worms you're opening here, but it's fun to mess with and can be cheap if put a lot of sweat equity into it.

[ChadTower]

I don't think that's really true.  I wouldn't be liable until I proved it wasn't me, so much as I might be suspected until they failed to prove that it was.  I can see it causing a great big inconvenience in a worst-case scenario where someone was downloading child porn or something, but what are the chances of that happening, really?  And in the end they would subject all my hard drives to data forensics, would find that they couldn't turn up a single instance of child porn, and that would be that.  It would be VERY inconvenient and stressful, but it'd all be over and then I'm sure I'd never let anyone else ever use my internet connection.

A person shady enough to use your internet connection to cover their pedophilia would also be shady enough to drop "evidence" onto your hard drive.  There have been a couple of cases of this in the past but for the life of me I can't find reference to them right now.  Few people who would run open wireless would set up client firewalls to prevent that from happening.

[shmokes]

My wifi access was on DMZ . . . an intruder was probably not going to be getting through y firewall and dropping anything on my hard drive.  And I was never worried about the terms of service of my ISP being violated.  Clearly, once my connection was being abused I had my own reasons to cut them off irrespective of the ISP's interests.

[ChadTower]

Putting it in the DMZ does make it harder to do that... so long as DMZ in this case means a separate piece of hardware and not the "soft DMZ" on the firewall itself (which is also assumed to be independent hardware here).  The soft DMZ on consumer routers is about as secure as an open window and really shouldn't be used for anything.

[boykster]

And I was never worried about the terms of service of my ISP being violated. 

Neither was I until I got a call from the security and abuse department of comcast....

[ChadTower]

Heh, a year ago I got a couple of letters from Comcast that basically said "We know you downloaded this item... knock it off".

[boykster]

I got nixed for violating the non-disclosed rolling soft monthly bandwidth cap    They claimed I downloaded over 300gigs of data during a 30 day period and if I did it again within 12mos that my account would be immediately cancelled with no recourse.

I blamed the kids down the street 

[J_K_M_A_N]

I got the email about a movie about a month ago from comcast. Damn kids  ! 

J_K_M_A_N

[SirPeale]

Back on topic!  Are there any free frontends?  Mainlobby costs like $100.

[boykster]

I think xlobby is free....

[NiN^_^NiN]

I would look at carpc frontends as an alternative

Frodoplayer is a good one so is Roadrunner

I personally did this ages ago when i first made a HTPC for video only

I created an Access Database which just linked to the files from the main PC and created the frontend in that which let me search for movies as i used the database part to display the DVD cover with runtime and description etc and had a play button for each and what that did was embed windows media player into the Access form and play the movie

There are ways to make access not look like access and even startup with your own logo

I had created more things with the access program like internet embedded into another form and music aswell as cooking recipes as it was sitting in the kitchen.

Anyway try mp3car.com forums and go to the software then frontend section you will find what you need

[bfauska]

Media Portal is open source.  It's fairly popular, seems versatile and they are about to start doing a whole new version (probably a tough time to start out a new software exploration, since it may all be changing.)

Xlobby is still available in a free version, they are about to go commercial. 

If your demands are as simple as you described in the original post, either of those with their free version should work and you would likely never have to upgrade to the pay version.

[SirPeale]

I've been playing with xlobby.  It's neat.  Few things, though...


1) it's very hard for the program to accurately find box covers to movies.  God forbid the title have the word 'The' in it. 

2) it plays my movies fine.  They're in a directory.  TV shows, OTOH, it just sort of sits there.  Can't/won't play anything.  Not sure why.  Tried clearing the DB and reloading...no dice.

[SirPeale]

XLobby doesn't want to seem to run, though it should.  Likely a strip-down and reinstall of Windows will do the trick. 

Media Portal only runs on XP and above.

Found a few hard drives yesterday, going to try an XP install to see how it fares.

[ChadTower]

Give a thought to using TinyXP, maybe... not sure how stripped down it really is, but if all you need is a player and XP itself, that may work with an older box short on resources.

Linux is probably much better for this purpose, though, if you can find a nice simple gui client player.

[SirPeale]

98 is running really well.  But XP will give me a snazzy FE.  *shrug* it'll all be up to experimentation.

[ChadTower]

Good progress... if you have two drives, install 98 on one and XP on the other, so that you can swap them back and forth without doing a time consuming reinstall if you decide to go back.

[SirPeale]

I just wish XPs footprint wasn't so big.  Most of the drives I've got are sub 1GHz.

[ChadTower]

TinyXP is like 400meg, I think, and requires very little RAM.  IIRC now I think it's the British version, though.

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

Give that a shot, maybe?

Why the aversion to Linux?  Modern installers make it really easy to get up and working.

[SirPeale]

I'll need a snazzy FE that's family friendly.  If there's a Linux one out there I'd give it a shot.  I was using Linux when it wasn't cool, I have no problems with it's use.

[SirPeale]

So I've been using my media player without any kind of front end as-is for a while now.  I've got a length of CAT-5E going under my rug connected to my main PC utilizing it as a pseudo-server.

I've had a copy of XP that I whittled down using nLite that I wanted to test on this.  I'd merged the drivers in so basically all I'd have to do (in theory) was just pop a new hard drive in (in case things went south I didn't want to screw with my original installation), pop the installation CD in, and walk away.

Well...as we all know, the best laid plans...

Two hard drives hooked up...neither one would be detected by the BIOS.  I have no idea why.  I tried different cables, different configurations (master/slave/CS) with no luck.  I know the drives work okay because I literally just pulled them from my existing PC.  So unfortunately I was forced to use the one in the PC already.

Popped in my nLite CD.  Got to the point where it's supposed to load the PCMCIA drivers...and it failed.  Since I'd removed them it balked.  Crap.  Started from scratch and made a new nLite CD.

Once Windows installed (which I had to help it along several times, despite having completed those particular sections in the nLite setup) I was having difficulties with video.  It was defaulting to 640x480x8 bit color.  The resolution was fine, but the color was not.  But every time I went to change it, the screen would blank and the computer would lock up.  Bah.

Thought it might be a driver issue.  Since the video card is just a Riva TNT2 card, I was using nVidia's generic drivers.  But it's an Asus AGP-3800, so I downloaded their "official" drivers.  No luck.  I tried it hooked up to a POS VGA monitor so I could see if there was anything going on I couldn't see on the TV.  Nope.

Finally had an idea: maybe XP just doesn't like this video card.  I had another AGP-3800 lying around.  Swapped it out...presto, perfect picture and the PC doesn't lock up!

Now for the front end...either xLobby or Media Portal.  Both require the use of the .NET framework, and I haven't been able to get it to install thus far.  I'm guessing it has to do with the lack of RAM (a whopping 80-ish megs).  I thought I had more RAM I could use in this beastie, but alas, I appear to be out.  I have a request on FreeCycle...hopefully someone will come thru.

[SirPeale]

Oh yes, the motherboard inside is an Asus P2B-F.

[ChadTower]

I have a request on FreeCycle...hopefully someone will come thru.

Asking for a specific component almost never works... but if you ask for a dead PC it  works pretty well.  RAM is rarely the reason a PC is dead.

[SirPeale]

I see sticks of RAM offered up occasionally. 

I've asked for dead PCs before, but no one's ever come thru.

[SirPeale]

Son of a...I find some RAM in a drawer I forgot about...install it...xLobby runs...for about five minutes.  Then I get a message "this version of xLobby has expired, please install the newest version."  Okay, sure.  Except it's not available without some kind of password.   

[Paladin]

I commend you on your choice of finding a low cost/free solution.  You're learning a lot about your computer and networking while you're getting it to work, which is always good.  I see that it's been 2 months and you're still not done.  I was impatient and bought a media player for around $200 last year.  I thought I'd chime in to let anyone reading this thread know that there are quick ways to do the same thing, even if they aren't free.

What I did was buy a DLink Media Lounge.  I hooked it up to the TV with the HDMI cable, and set up the built in wireless to my SSID and WEP security phrase.  My MAME cab has a P4 Celeron with 2 gigs RAM that's always on, and is connected to my network with CAT5.  It's got Windows Media Player 11 which natively streams - no setup necessary, and I didn't have to load the free streaming software that came with the Media Lounge.  All I do is turn on the media lounge via its remote, and it connects to my MAME PC.  I then choose what video, music or pictures I want and it plays on the TV.

Pretty much all I play are .avi .wmv and .mp3 files, but it plays them all fine.  I've never had a glitch using the wireless setup, but I admit that I haven't tried ripping a DVD to the machine and trying to play the VOB's.  If it didn't stream fast enough, I'm sure changing the connection to a wired one would solve that.

Like I said, I'm not trying to detract from what you're doing.  Saving money and recycling technology is great, I just wanted to share my solution.  I had my setup running in a few hours, and it was pretty much plug and play.  To me it was worth the money for the ease of setup.

[SirPeale]

Really haven't learned much on this project.  I've been doing this kind of stuff since I was eight.  I'm 34 now.

Most of the problems I've had to deal with have either been bottlenecks or financial difficulties.  Since I want to work with what I already have, these go hand-in-hand.

I've got xLobby working well now.  Problem is it's an expired version.  Solution: set the calendar a year back. 

I can't figure out how to get it to play my TV shows.  Movies were easy - point the dir at my movies folder, it organized them, gave them thumbnails, downloaded info about the movies.  I pointed the 'video files' towards my TV shows, but it doesn't play them.  Can't find the video files, I guess.  Still working on that.

[bfauska]

If you want your calander to be correct you can search for the old free version of XLobby, they have just recently added the expiration aspect as they move into the commercial version of the product. Obviously there are new features to the new software, but many people had the old version set up to work great for what you are looking to do. If you can't find a download of it anywhere and want it let me know and I'll send a zip or rar to you.