Media Center suggestions?

[kenj70]

It appears then that perhaps MythTV is getting a little long in the tooth. Sorry about that - it used to work great back in the day.

Yes, if dog years are X7 people years I think computer years is X10. A lot has happened in just five years. Linux is robust, no longer fragil (IMO).

I appreciate your contributions here.

-=Ken=-

BTW, I am finding that the new bookmark application will insist that that it propagate to all your PCs once you log in to it. I only want that frontend on my Web TV PC. Details, details,,, I am in the process of establishing a freebie email just for this project!

[kenj70]

Status of My Web TV Browser Project

I have been fussing about the slowness of my new (old) Gateway Small Form Factor (SFF) PC seeing as it has dual cores running at 1.4 GHz. If the new GT730 video card doesn't improve the performance enough I will have spent my precious retirement bucks on a dud. The little SoC Chinese Android boxes and the Raspberry Pi stream 4K video, why can't I? I would be satisfied with 1080p but this buffers the video too much. The GT730 is on its way from China. Why, I don't know. Do they build these things on demand? Any way, it will take another week to reach me. I already installed another matching 4GB RAM stick, which of course made no discernible increase in speed. 18 usd isn't too bad for a recycle part.

In a previous post I was crowing about how I got a spare SATA 3 PCIe controller card to fit in the remaining expansion slot. But after further inspection I found that the HDD is rated SATA 2 (3 Mb/s). Dang! I have a half dozen HDDs in my junk box, so I got them out and discovered - every single one of them is rated SATA 2 (3 Mb/s). Double dang. My spare parts are getting old, too! I spotted a small SSD on Newegg for only 23 usd and I may have to add that to my rig. We will see.

Looking at the Raspberry Pi units I noticed they were selling a USB wi-fi adapter with a removable/adjustable dipole antenna for 10 usd. I looked at eBay and sent for the same item for 7 usd! Would it work? Yes, it does. The tiny unit comes with a mini-disk with drivers including Linux but I simply plugged it in and KDE Neon found it instantly! Logged into my network and works fine. The living room TV is further away so we will see how it works at distance in a week or so.

While I was fussing with the HDDs I looked for some Linux utilities to test them with. I was used to using HDTune on Windows and lamented there was no equivalent on Linux. As it turns out, there is. It works exactly like HDTune and then some - and I already had it on both rigs. It's named 'Disks' but in Discover it's named 'Gnome-Disks'. After reading an Internet article I found that you could click on the "Hamburger" button (apparently Gnome likes hamburgers, too!) and select "Benchmark Disk..." and the pop-up looks and operates just like HDTune. I am happy!

Testing my various disks, my SATA 2 HDD in the SFF PC averages 82.6 MB/s. My desktop PC has an M.2 Nvme drive that tests north of 3500 MB/s. I am used to my modest Ryzen 3 rig being quite "snappy."

In addition to the 'Disks' utility I am using 'GSmartControl' and 'hardinfo' which identifies as System Profiler and Benchmark." It looks like the complete System Information utilities I used on Windows and I decided to rename mine as that in the Menu.

My current Web TV interface is the full-screen bookmark website 'myMark.me'. I installed and played around with this interface until I got it looking right and then installed on the SFF rig. What I found out is that whenever you are logged into Firefox the interface will very faithfully share that interface with all your desktops! I don't want to use this interface on my desktop PC so I had to re-register myMark.me with a different email account. Fortunately, my ISP provides a never used web mail address and I was able to use that - forwarding all notifications to my main email account. It was just a little bit extra hassle to set this up. If you want pointers for setting up myMark.me the way I did just ask.

From working with Chinese set top boxes several years ago I still have three 'air mouse' remote control units with a tiny keyboard on the back. I have tried using them with this interface and they work fairly well although you can't count on all the functions working as advertised since they are sold to work on the whole spectrum of PCs from Androids to Windows. The one I am using most has Page-Up and Page-Down keys which I find useful for scrolling down long pages. The only thing that seems missing is a "Back" or "Return" to previous page key that works properly. I will have to see about some sort of key remapping utility.

Enough for now.

-=Ken=-

[shag00]

@Ken,

I think I was not clear enough on my earlier post, to play 1080p a video card is not necessary. Your problem is the CPU, CPU's are optimised at the hardware level to play video streams and even dropping a GTX 1080 on an old CPU will not fix the problem.

[kenj70]

@Ken,

I think I was not clear enough on my earlier post, to play 1080p a video card is not necessary. Your problem is the CPU, CPU's are optimised at the hardware level to play video streams and even dropping a GTX 1080 on an old CPU will not fix the problem.

Hmmmm... If that's true then I have spent unwisely. The early AMD APUs may have been underpowered. I built an AMD rig with an APU about four years ago and I edited video with it. The CPU portion was twice as fast though.

I've got $165 usd into this rig now. For a mere 29 usd more I can get the 1.7 GHz version of this MB. I really don't want to do that.

-=Ken=-

[shag00]

Yes, that was what I was trying to warn you about before. If/when you migrate to UHD you will face the same issues. All that said the most important factor in watching high definition video is the bit rate. The terms SD, HD and UHD (540, 720, 1080 and 2160, i or a) are really only about 20% of the issue when you want to watch a video, they are best used to determine what size screen you are limited to for a clear picture with no pixalisation. Bit rate on the other hand is what causes all the problems for PCs as it is the driver for resource usage, and a huge driver it is too.

Bit rate is also what gives the lie to all the streaming services and their claims for high definition and ultra high definition viewing. As a viewer we are chasing as realistic as possible representation of a scene, that is, as much detail if we saw the the same with our own eyes. There is no doubt that higher definition aids this process by composing each picture with more detail but that is not the full story, a truer but not complete story would by definition x bit rate x colour. I can make you a better overall movie in 1080 than you get from a UHD Netflix movie because I can make a movie in 1080 at 30 or 40MB/s while Netflix limit your UHD to 20MB/s. The easiest way to visualise this is to find an animation with curvy lines, the higher the bit rate the smoother the lines appear pretty much regardless of the definition and using a smaller monitor.

[kenj70]

I appreciate your your insight and expertise. I am old. My needs are modest. I always complained that SD video was poor/sub-standard. Once we got to 720p HDTV though, we were good. I have cataracts trying to form. I also don't have the golden ears of my youth but instead have hearing aids. We don't need a sound bar. At this point in my life I don't need to be entertained, although some web videos are indeed entertaining. The original purpose for this Web TV project was to view alternative news and commentary. So, if I can get 720p videos to play without buffering it will do.

Low expectations are less expensive too! Thanks for adding to the conversation.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

I have inherited a new brick....

I have been trying to get the old Gateway SX2110 to work properly on KDE Neon with an nvidia GT730 GPU. I finally checked the Gateway website and found there was a bios update and it intimated that the update was intended to get the unit to work on Linux. So... I tried and tried to get the bios to update but it would not. So, I tried following some other websites instructions. One added a /x command line switch that I hadn't tried before. So I used it and... everything appeared to go through the flash sequence... until it got to the end and reported an error. Now I have a new brick!

I haven't yet decided what to get instead. But... I will yet do this.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

New Components Ordered

My wife says I am sometimes too cheap and I should buy new components. This time, of course, she was right. So, I have ordered a SFF case/power supply, microATX motherboard, CPU and an 8 GB stick of RAM. At this point I have received all but the case/power supply. I am quite familiar with the AMD Ryzen 3 1200 and found a deal for $62.29! That is about half the cost it was two years ago. That is a lot of performance for a modest budget. I scored a motherboard for $50 and RAM for $41. For a hundred bucks more I can have new. Now I am a hundred bucks poorer with an old, dead PC.

The case/power supply arrives next week. I have chronicled my journey here not only to get help, but to share and perhaps inspire others. This topic started by asking the wrong question. The new direction, viewing web videos on the living room TV, might require a new topic to be useful.

Question: Should I start a new topic to document my project? (or, is this not sufficiently interesting?)

-=Ken=-

[TWPonKubuntu]

kenj70, I'm fine with your continuing this thread. No need to start a new one (unless the mods choose otherwise...).

[claydoh]

kenj70, I'm fine with your continuing this thread. No need to start a new one (unless the mods choose otherwise...).

I don't care which direction is taken, but imnsho it will be easier for others to see and notice a new topic. If they see have already seen this one, and are not interested in it, they may just skip over new posts here and never notice the new direction. Again, just my opinion.

[kenj70]

Thanks guys. I think I will put together a new topic How To, now that I have the initial questions sorted out. It should be straight-forward now.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

New Hardware Boots Right Up

I just got the new rig running. IN-WIN small form factor (SFF) case, ASRock microATX motherboard, AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU and one 8 GB stick of 3200 RAM. I got a good deal on this stuff. The CPU was ~65 usd. The MB was 50 usd. And the RAM was 41 usd. I originally thought the case was overpriced at 72 usd until I found that it included a 300 watt PSU. This is all really nice gear - at a bargain price.

I put it all together using the SSD, DVD writer and GT730 GPU from the old rig. I started it up with a KDE Neon ISO disk in the drive but it booted up so fast I missed the startup option. I was quite surprised when the new rig went ahead and booted up from the SSD I had used in the old rig! I expected to have to re-install the OS but Linux just found the new components and booted up anyway! I sure like Linux these days.

-=Happy Ken=-

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Thank you for the compliment of trying some of my suggestions!
As to PMC yes...YES...

THAT IS THE ONE complaint that i have about it, that it has absolutely NO options for configuring it,

One takes what it is and adapts to it or does not.

I still find it very nice for...as you said...LOCAL files and standing at the "ten foot interface" as you term it.

And yes I use the quick launch for finding files but not starting apps per-se.

I have a different activity for different day to day apps such as PMC or Streemio or "online t.v. ( because of the politicians messing over retired teachers income I have dropped cable entirely and now watch "cable news" on an internet app.

I just don't do the "tv shows" anymore.

I also have an activity for things like RSS feeds, etc.

So, again, yes... no way to configure PMC.

Interesting post, thankee!

woody