I appologize if this is the wrong forum for this.

I'm a newb (obviously) to media content.

I LOVE home audio and home entertainment.
I have a windows XP server in my bedroom (not far from living room) that has roughly 25,000 MP3's, and a large collection of Music videos and other stuff.

I wanted to get a media reciever to stream the content. But i know how buggy and crappy they are still.

What i'm wondering, is if i build my own system, is MythTV or any others worth using for making simply a wireless media streamer with a user interface?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer on this, if there is a better forum, please let me know where!

depends on what you mean by streaming.

I personaly don't have a tv/dvb card so I only use the box as mediaplayer. It is certainly possible. but I do not use 'streaming' aka upnp. I mount the shares of another computer to play the media. so it is possible.

Well, i don't use linux that much so i'm not that familiar with what you mean

By streaming, i guess i mean simply having a media player, and playlists and being able to play mp3s and video files, or show pictures, from my server on that computer - pull it over the wireless network (it is secured with a key code - wep or wap, i forget lol)

I would like a buffer obviously.

But from what i gather, it sounds like you are doing what i want to do.

What are the basic recomended specs for doing this sort of processing?
(i'm a windows guy - i have a small amount of unix/linux hands on experiance - i know linux uses way less resources)

Thanks for the fast reply!

most streaming media players you can buy in the store use upnp as protocol for streaming the media to the player, and special software on another pc as a server.

I use windows file sharing aka smb (on linux but that doesn't matter) It's just another protocol for sharing data over the network

before I installed linux on my mediaplayer I used windows (winamp/mediaplayer classic/uice) to play my media, but I got tired of virii/spyware..

I tried movix and geexbox as linux media player before I chose mythtv/knoppmyth and I'll stick with this one, cause the other ones dont support music as good as knoppmyth.

If you're looking for an easy solution this might be not be what you're looking for, but if you like fiddling and tweaking your pc, you will get your share! I've put about 12 hours of work into this mediaplayer up till now, and I'm close to getting the remote to work (this is only because I use different hardware then is suggested by knoppmyth)

so, if you don't mind completely formatting the hard drive, you should at least give it a try (or use a spare hd) I can't tell you what you like, only you can

As long as i can get it to do what i want - i'm stoked - and i don't mind tinker time - i am busy all durring the weeks usually - but on the weekends - i have no work, no classes, nothing but time duringthe days - so i can definately tinker and play with it


What sort of specs on the box are required or suggested?

I want to start pricing out the cost of this system or searching for spare parts from work and all

Thnx!

if you just need to play video and audio the minimum for a processor would be about 1ghz (would work with less too, but just to be on the safe side) for ram I would suggest at least 512Mb, remember a mysql database needs to run as backend. you might want to install webmin for administration purposes. And I can't say anything about the resources needed by the wireless network card (all utp cable here) I'm sure it uses some resources.

It will run on a spare box I did it with a
P4 1500 mhz
512 ram
2O GB hd (all media on network)
a simple videocard (nvidia vanta)
with a trust televiewer to connect it to tv (saves a lot of video configuration)

but if you plan on buying hardware you might want to go for other hardware suggested here on the board.

I too use KnoppMyth as a media player for media (audio, video, and pictures) stored on a Win2k PC. I don't use a WIFI network card but if you can get supported hardware should work fine. I would search the forums for a while to find the right WIFI card.

You really don't need a superfast machine, works fine with PIII 500 for me. If you have old hardware laying around I suggest slapping it together and giving it a go. But like Bonarez' suggestions are right on if you have to hunt down/buy hardware. Check my level 2 post on low end media player machine.

http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7732

I too played with GeeXboX before Myth, while the GeeX is much more simple to use some things I didn't like was lack of dynamic playlist support at the time and I prefer the extra eye candy in MythTV. You don't have to know jack squat about Linux to use GeeXboX it is very transparent, but you will end up learning some Linux if you use MythTV (which isn't hard).

You're right, geexbox is as easy to use as a coffee machine, but it doesn't have the possibilities that mythtv does, and the knoppmyth install is very easy and straightforward.

I've been using linux for a few years now, my fileserver is even an old pc: P2 466mhz 512 ram, with clarkconnect whitch is normaly used as a linux router with webserver/vpn/mailserver/proxy software, but can be run as a simple samba server. though I know linux, I doubt if I could do a mythtv install myself, at least not so easy as with knoppmyth. and certainly not as fast.