Media Center suggestions?

[kenj70]

Excellent! More usable links. Thanks Snowhog.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

Dealing with hardware

As I mentioned I picked up a used Gateway small form factor (SFF) PC at a local PC repair shop for $100 usd. It is model SX2110 which has an AMD APU running 1.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM and a 500 GB HDD running on SATA II. I loaded KDE Neon on it since that is what is on my main rig. I am most familiar with Neon and it comes with minimal software which is ideal for this project.

I was a little concerned about the ability to play back web videos full screen and my fears were met with - it works, mostly. If I set the videos to 720p they play with occasional buffering. On 1080p they buffer pretty regular - every thirty seconds or so. So, I did a little testing to see if I could improve things. I loaded Puppy Linux because Puppy loads into RAM. Puppy comes with the Pale Moon web browser and the throughput was awful. I installed Chromium and it was much faster. I had the same results as with KDE Neon. So, my conclusion is that the HDD is not a critical factor for speed. Even so, I had in my "junk box" a PCI SATA III adapter left over from an older project and installed it in the PCI 1 slot.

Since I couldn't fish out the existing SATA cable from the very cramped chassis I just put in a new one. Didn't work! Hmmmm... BIOS is custom for Gateway and very limited. So, I decided to reinstall KDE Neon. Neon found the new controller! Now my SATA speed is doubled from 3 Gb/s to 6 Gb/s. Note: No improvement in web video playback, which was expected. At least my configuring this machine ought to go a little faster.

So, Just as I surmised, the bottleneck has to be the video controller. AMD APUs have improved greatly in the last few years but I would count on adding a discrete video graphics card in a rig like this. I am on the hunt for a low cost card that has HDMI.

I would like to note here, after installing KDE Neon a couple times, that it took so long to install on this older rig that the screen locker and power save options kicked in. I thought the install had stalled! I don't know why those options are always toggled on during a fresh install. I always turn them off. Also, when I start up a fresh install of Chromium it always wants me to configure Kwallet. What a nuisance! I disable that as well.

As you can see I like to chronicle my projects in case they are useful to others. And sometimes I get useful suggestions from the KFN regulars. I do enjoy this. Next up will be setting up some software.

-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

Being a dual core cpu will be a bottleneck in terms of speed and power, especially with modern browsers, but Plasma itself should run fine.
The gpu is a bit meager, but should in theory do 1080p. As there is no proprietary driver for this, the free driver is the only choice. You may have to research tweaks, but the best bet for this is to add the oiabaf ppa for driver and mesa updates, and/or install the hwe driver stack for a more recent kernel.


fwiw, you can get a stronger system for 100-ish bucks if you look for recommendations, and know what to look for in a seller
This store, I have purchased two refurbs over the years, and my i5 HP 8300 sff PC I got for 115, but that was pushing 2 years ago. The i5 will obviously be faster, and even the lowly intel graphics is better than the radeon in the Gateway, I think. I did use mine for 1080p video, I think, but I upgraded the GPU fairly quickly as the PC was so cheap. Um, er, yeah, my gpu cost a bit more than the rest of the PC, lol, if you don't count the gradual ram upgrades. But I can do 4k, and do some somewhat demanding gaming on the thing. I am supposed to be too old for that though.

[woodsmoke]

I installed 'Plasma Media Center' in Discover. I am severely underwhelmed! It finds all my local audio, photos and videos. Fine, but how do you configure the durn thing?


YEP, it does not admit of much modification!
EXCEPT it will allow one to change transparency, but if it gets "too" transparent it is almost unusable.

I tried numerous shortcut keys, function keys and so on but no cigar. I hooked up one of my air mouse remote controls

REALLY!!? What brand!?

and the D-pad right and left arrows work - slowly. The air mouse is very efficient for selecting a file though - if that fits your requirements.

Typical KDE project, no documentation, no user guide and no support.

yep I agree, I offered to write a docujmentation for it but was summarily ignored.

I searched through the KDE forums and found some references - five years old. The only shortcut I found is Alt-F4 exits the program.

yep

Since PMC has NO application for Internet video I am done with it.

Thank you for that, I thought that possibly I had just not found such or maybe had the wrong version.

Next post I will describe the Site Specific Browser. Those are kinda neat. -=Ken=-

woodthankeesomie

[kenj70]

You may have to research tweaks, but the best bet for this is to add the oiabaf ppa for driver and mesa updates, and/or install the hwe driver stack for a more recent kernel.

claydoh, could you explain this to me. I tried looking for some proprietary drivers but failed.

Edit: duh, looked it up. I stumbled upon this once before but it sure looks like something for developers, not end users. I will look through it tomorrow to see if I can figure it out.

Wow, never saw "hwe" before. Time for the old dog to learn some new tricks!

fwiw, you can get a stronger system for 100-ish bucks if you look for recommendations, and know what to look for in a seller
This store, I have purchased two refurbs over the years, and my i5 HP 8300 sff PC I got for 115, but that was pushing 2 years ago. The i5 will obviously be faster, and even the lowly intel graphics is better than the radeon in the Gateway, I think. I did use mine for 1080p video, I think, but I upgraded the GPU fairly quickly as the PC was so cheap. Um, er, yeah, my gpu cost a bit more than the rest of the PC, lol, if you don't count the gradual ram upgrades. But I can do 4k, and do some somewhat demanding gaming on the thing. I am supposed to be too old for that though.

This is good to know. I avoid Intel but I'm sure there are AMD rigs around. Doesn't the shipping kill you though?

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

Hey, woody!

REALLY!!? What brand!?

I have three different air mouse remotes from when I was experimenting with a Beelink S82B Android set top box. The one I like to use with the web TV is a "Vygica" - at least that's what I remember. It doesn't have any nomenclature on it at all. They all come with a miniature USB transceiver dongle and I just plug any one of them in to a USB port and they take off straight away. And there are numerous look alikes available on Amazon. Here is a link.

https://www.amazon.com/JUHANG-Wirele...KFSVS9GBQZ7DYF

They are really cheap (inexpensive). I also have one made by Tronsmart and one made by Mele. All three have a miniature keyboard on the back. They work in a pinch but for doing major work on the living room TV I get out my Logitech K400r wireless keyboard with finger pad. Much faster.

The Roku remote is such a marvel of design simplicity that I think I will find one similar to it for this project that is simpler and doesn't have the keyboard on the backside.

-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

claydoh, could you explain this to me. I tried looking for some proprietary drivers but failed.

There are no proprietary drivers for this card, only the free ones. You can get newer radeon and mesa drivers, etc using this PPA, as well as enabling HWE to get newer kernels (currently 18.10's) in *buntu LTS releases. Probably for your older card, the PPA is probably all that you need. You might also see if you can increase the amount of system ram dedicated to video, I forgot about this option.

This is good to know. I avoid Intel but I'm sure there are AMD rigs around. Doesn't the shipping kill you though?

-=Ken=-

Note this seller is free shipping

As to AMD vs Intel, Sure, there are better CPUs from AMD you can find, especially compared to your rather low-end version, but in the used market, these older business machines are much more amenable to being refurbished as there are so many of them, and they were built to be easily and quickly serviced and have replacement parts galore. The Intel units are much more popular, and powerful, so those office machines usually have the AMD hardware swapped out for the Intel stuff.

I still have the older dual core intel HP sff pc, dunno if it boots or not. It is missing ram, iirc, and has no hard disk. I think it has a mediocre but HD capable Nvida card in it. I haven't gotten rid of it mainly because
of the thought of having to package and ship the beast I am lazy.

[kenj70]

There are no proprietary drivers for this card, only the free ones. You can get newer radeon and mesa drivers, etc using this PPA, as well as enabling HWE to get newer kernels (currently 18.10's) in *buntu LTS releases. Probably for your older card, the PPA is probably all that you need. You might also see if you can increase the amount of system ram dedicated to video, I forgot about this option.

Thanks for the link. I finally figured it out and installed the PPA. A few minutes later Discover informed me about some updates and they were for the video. Now, the desktop apps are noticeably more responsive! Tried video from YouTube and it was the same - no improvement. The video buffer is set as high as it can go - 512 MB.

-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

Heck I wasn't paying enough attention again. Video buffering on YouTube or streaming sites would be a bandwidth issue, not a video driver problem. You might want to see what a speed test shows.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

[kenj70]

Heck I wasn't paying enough attention again. Video buffering on YouTube or streaming sites would be a bandwidth issue, not a video driver problem. You might want to see what a speed test shows.

Sent from my LG-H931 using Tapatalk

I don't think that's the problem. High speed cable Internet here from Comcast/Xfinity tests 75.1 Mb/s today. I tied unloading some Chromium browser extensions, too. No change.
-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

Is it buffering(stopping or pausing), then continuing to play, or is it constantly stuttering (jumpy, choppy, skippy, or tearing.? Is it only Yotube, or any video in general (playback of downloaded video). How does it do in Firefox?

[kenj70]

Is it buffering(stopping or pausing), then continuing to play, or is it constantly stuttering (jumpy, choppy, skippy, or tearing.? Is it only Yotube, or any video in general (playback of downloaded video). How does it do in Firefox?

It is buffering. Already ahead of you - tried Firefox. It is actually a little better in Firefox, buffering a lot to start and then smoothing out. Almost like it is adjusting its parameters dynamically. However, Firefox has only one extension installed. Chromium, once I logged in, loaded a raft of extensions inherited from my main rig including a freebie VPN. I toggled the VPN off and it makes no difference.

Cpu utilization is pretty high for any operation on this old rig. Looks like I got something too underpowered for full-screen streaming video. It has a single stick of RAM, 4 GB. I have read where adding another stick for dual data rate would likely only give me another 5 to 10 percent CPU speed. OTOH, that might be just enough. $18 usd for a stick of RAM and ~~$25 usd for a used video card. For about $75 usd more I could have built a new rig in my spare PC case. It wouldn't have been nearly as cute though.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

Getting the Web TV Interface Set Up

For web browser you can use Chrome, Chromium, Firefox or Vivaldi. I was going to use Vivaldi because of its configurability. Alas, it was too configurable and I find I don't have hours to tweak! So, I'm using familiar Chromium .

First we need to add an extension to our browser. Search for 'Auto Zoom.' I expect to experiment further with extensions such as 'Zoom Page WE'. I am using 'Auto Zoom' at this time. I set the 'Auto Zoom' font size to 24. Under advanced settings I set Font Size all the way to the right and Margin all the way to the left.

Download and install the Ice application: https://launchpad.net/~peppermintos/..._5.3.4_all.deb
When installed it will be found in the Internet portion of your system launcher/menu. Run Ice and notice the requirements. You can leave it open on the desktop.

Open your browser and set it to full screen. Find a website such as YouTube. Navigate to a channel you frequently visit, such as Linus Tech Tips. Now, highlight the URL in the navigation bar and Copy. Minimize the web browser. Go to the Ice application and paste the URL into the second box labeled "Enter web address." In the top most box type in the name of the Application as you want it to appear in your web shortcut. Select Internet for menu location. Select 'Use site favicon' or 'Select an icon' to finish the object. (Having a collection of suitable icons might be necessary).

Finally select your web browser and click Apply.

A useful thing to do now is open the KDE panel and set it to Auto-hide. This will give maximum room for the browser.

Now select the new website link from your launcher/Internet menu and it will open. You may have to select full-screen. Once you exit this SSB it will remember full screen.

This works for Internet video websites. I have tried to enter saved video searches from Dogpile and Qwant search but Ice doesn't seem to accept them. Limitations - limitations...

Using YouTube and similar websites you still have to maximize the video. I don't know how to solve this shortcoming. Perhaps there is a better browser extension I don't yet know about. There is an old TV browser project named Kylo. It was developed only for MS Windows and the Mac, although they say it doesn't really work on the Mac. I don't know how useful it was but it would take getting a developer or two interested to breath some useful life into it. (Crowd funding, anyone?!)

That's enough for now. Next I will describe using the Quicklauncher widget to get a makeshift full screen launcher.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

Creating a Full-screen Launcher

Admittedly makeshift - but functional, for now.

Add the Quicklaunch launcher widget to your desktop. Drag it to the upper-right hand corner. Extend the lower-left hand border to make the launcher fill, perhaps 2/3 of the desktop. I size mine so I don't have drag the links from the system menu very far. Open the system menu/launcher to the Internet category and drag one of the SSB links and drop it on the Quicklaunch. The icon will be very large but they will get smaller as they share with additional icons. Now would be a good time to configure Quicklaunch to have 3 rows. Also tick boxes to Show launcher names and Enable popup. Leave Show title unchecked. Click OK.

Start adding more SSB shortcuts to the Quicklaunch. As a proof of concept I simply added my first shortcut to the Quicklaunch 12 times. 12 seems to me to be the optimum size for the Quicklaunch launcher. Close the system menu. Drag the lower-left corner SLOWLY until it fills perhaps 95 percent of the desktop. On my little underpowered rig the Quicklaunch will crash to the menu bar if I drag it too fast.

Note: if you used YouTube shortcut favicons they will look pixilated. Most other websites don't do this. Using a better icon solves this problem.

This works, but it is not ideal. Do you have suggestions for a better launcher?

-=Ken=-

Screenshot of full screen Quicklauncher with 12 icons (not all SSB). I think you could add a 4th row and then get 16 or 20 icons which can be seen from the couch.

[kenj70]

Kylo TV Web Browser and Alternatives

Meanwhile, while I am waiting for my GT730 video card, a second 4 GB DDR3 RAM stick and a USB WIFI dongle to arrive from eBay to boost my underpowered SFFPC I will explore the Kylo TV browser and some possible alternatives.

http://tv-true.org/platforms/kylo-browser-review.html Here is a screen shot (1 of 8) from that website:



It has the navigation bar at the bottom. Interesting, and different, but users say it is quite natural using a TV that is usually mounted somewhat above normal eye level. Check the link because it has an on-screen keyboard and the large controls that lend themselves to TV on the couch. One of the screenshots shows a video search website named Truveo but, wouldn't you know, it no longer exists, at least in a form we could use. This TV browser is still available for M$ Windows but uses some old and obsolete tech to make it work. Apparently, it never worked properly on a Mac and no mention of Linux.

------------------------------------------------------

One interesting TV interface works for YouTube only. It's called YouTube Leanback. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned more.

http://www.youtube.com/leanback screen shot (Note: I had trouble getting a borderless screen shot)



It works very much like the Roku app including the "woot" sound it makes every time you use the arrow keys to navigate.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Another possibility I briefly looked at was adapting some current tech to this purpose. I can navigate a Linux file system pretty well but I am NOT a programmer. Programming just frustrates me most of the time. Therefore I would be looking for a so called "framework" that can be used to "plug in" another (small) piece of code to do what we want. So far I looked at PHP Desktop. The docs say it does pretty much what we want and all we need to do is customize it a little bit. (At least that's my naive take on it thus far!) I would appreciate you kind folks taking a look at this github project and giving your estimation of the likelihood of it working for us. Or not. Or something even better. Thanks.

-=Ken=-