What's simple media center, preferably linux/free ?

[gainphile]

I've been looking around at the features of popular ones like Freevo, Entertainer, MediaPortal etc. Also installed MythUbuntu successfully. While the eye-candy are good what I need is simple file-explorer type of display. I don't like the "jukebox" approach where the application needs to extract/import files.

The materials are .flac of various resolution (CD, 16/96, 24/96 and few 192s)

If it can play movie, that's a bonus.

 

[theAnonymous1]

I don't know about simple, but here is a site with a comparison chart of the 10 most prominent open source media center programs.......

http://www.telematicsfreedom.org/en/project/14/floss-media-center-state-art

 

[dangus]

MPXplay runs from DOS or Windows, supports zillions of audio file formats, and is regularly updated. I haven't actually used it myself, though.
Mpxplay
It could be a good choice for a workshop/basement media player using "disposable" or free computer hardware, since the CPU, memory, and display requirements are minimal.

 

[gainphile]

I've tried some of the Linux MCEs, here are my finding. I'm not experienced with Linux except installing Ubuntu (which is simpler than windows in fact).

I tried them on Ubuntu 8.10 and 7.10 which is my preferred versions.

MythTv: Easy to install, nice features but have a database/jukebox approach. It will scan drives etc.

Elisa: Easy to install, very basic.

Freevo: I could not get it to work

MyMediaSystem (MMS): This is really great. Plays TV, Internet radio too. Very good graphical interface and very fast. At the moment it is my choice. Problem: The playback for 24/96khz FLAC is skippy. Still trying to fix.

XBMC: Nice graphics but too heavy. Quite slow to navigate.

Entertainer: Supposed to be nice, but I could not get it to work.


I will soon try a free windows Media center (MediaPortal). It looks good from the specs. It can use Foobar as the player etc. so they should be good to play 24/96 FLACs.

 

[rdf]

http://geexbox.org/en/index.html

Use the ISO generator, pretty simple and self-explanatory.

 

[gainphile]

Thanks for that tip in GeeXbox. Have you any experience in playing 24/96kHz files on it and how do they perform? About 80% (in size) of my materials are 24/94kHz

I made good progress today. As MyMediaSystem do not run on Ubuntu 8.10, so I upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04. The high resolution 24/96kHz FLAC files play perfectly

This is what I did:

- Install Ubuntu 8.04 then run updates.

- Add the following lines from Synaptic -> repository

deb http://www.prodeia.de/mms/hardy binary/
deb-src http://www.prodeia.de/mms source/

Then do reload from Synaptic.

- Tick "mms-audio-gstreamer" and klick "Apply".

That's it.

The above option installs a minimalist version of the Media Center basically audio player and Internet radio. I will investigate adding movie player, photo viewer, etc. (just another ticks... I love Ubuntu!)

 

[rdf]

I only used Geexbox for movies, eventually replacing it with Oxine on Gentoo. Since Xine is the underlying engine it'll play anything you have with matching codecs. BTW, Oxine is another option. Set up Xorg to run it as the window manager for a nice and easy interface.

 

[gainphile]

MMS can in fact use Xine, but I found out it has many problems playing 96kHz recording. For others like CD-quality flac there is no problems.