CS 488 - Extreme Linux - George K. Thiruvathukal

Project Team: Peter Aarestad, Laura Griffel, Doris Woods

Introduction

Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition is a version of Windows designed to allow users not only to have a fully-functioning desktop multimedia PC, but also to allow the user to perform many tasks related to multimedia easily. In addition, the user can use the system as a PVR system similar to the popular Tivo system (which itself is based on Linux). The only special hardware required is a video capture card which costs somewhere in the range of $49-120, depending on the features needed (the most widely recommended card line is the Hauppauge WinTV line of cards). Unfortunately, it's Microsoft :), and thus, you are tied to their software. (see Why Bother? below)

We wish to investigate software packages available for Linux that will bring all the features of Windows Media Center to the user along with all the freedoms of open source software. We wish to take several solutions currently being developed by various groups of people, and compare them on the basis of ease of installation, compatibility with standard hardware, overall stability (i.e. lack of bugs), ease of use, and completeness of functionality. We will choose the best of the pack, and suggest ways that it could be improved. We will also attempt to implement changes that we think we can accomplish, though this will depend on our skill level in the language with which that package was developed.

The Alternatives

Here are some of the software packages that are available for accomplishing the task at hand. We have listed each of them below with brief descriptions of their features and small details on their installation process and minimum requirements. Although our focus will be on Freevo and MythTV we will be taking a glance at other alternatives such as DVR and NMM Multimedia-Box. (We also considered a software package called Dave/Dina, but we had trouble finding decent documentation on it, and decided to concentrate on other packages.)

Freevo

Freevo is an open-source digital video jukebox (PVR, DVR) based on Linux in addition to a number of open-source audio/video tools. MPlayer is used to play audio and video files. MPlayer is an excellent media player that can play most popular file formats. Freevo can be used both for a standalone PVR computer with a TV+remote, as well as on a regular desktop computer using the monitor and keyboard. Freevo is easy to download and install. Most hardware is supported (graphic boards, sound cards and video capture devices). Freevo is mostly written in the Python programming language, which is very well suited for high-level control applications like Freevo.

There are two ways to install Freevo. The first one is using binary distribution. This contains Freevo itself and a runtime with Python and all needed Python modules. This works for most distributions. The installation script will put everything needed in one directory. The second way is to install Freevo directly into your system. This also requires the installation of all dependencies. The installation process depends on your distribution if you don't want to compile everything yourself. Freevo also provides distribution-specific packages available for the major distributors of Linux.

MythTV

MythTV lets you record and watch TV; it also pauses and rewinds live TV. MythTV also plays music, plays any format of video, media, shows images, reports the weather, summarizes the news, plays DVDs and emulated games. MythTV has a few more features that Freevo lack but can be more difficult to install. To install MythTV we will need to install ALSA to provide media and MIDI functionality to the Linux operating system. Like Freevo, MythTV will also require a few libraries and applications, as well as XMLTV to download TV listing and LIRC will be necessary to use our remote to control with the Linux PVR once it is set up.

DVR

DVR is a digital video recorder it records video pictures digitally on a hard disk drive (HDD). This HDD is usually built-in, has capacity of 20 GB, 30 GB or 60GB to store the records. You can program the picture resolution and recording time according to the application; real-time or time-lapse recording also available. As DVR records digitally, the image quality remains the same regardless of how many times the images are stored or rerecorded. In addition, you can select images quickly by using time/date or alarm search, or just browsing through.

NMM Multimedia-Box

NMM Multimedia-Box is a multimedia middleware package that allows creation of distributed multimedia applications easily. A number of plugins supporting various media types, operations, and I/O devices are included. The Multimedia-Box application built on top of NMM provides an extensible home entertainment system for DVD/CD playback and grabbing, TV with time-shifting, video recording, and playlist creation and playback for all supported media types.

Comparison Methodology

We are going to evaluate these systems by installing them and testing them out. We will focus on Freevo and MythTV, and install the other systems as time permits. The first thing we will be looking at is the installation. Installation on MythTV is generally known to be more difficult, but MythTV supposedly has more features than Freevo. We will look at how many prerequisites we need to install and how long it takes to install and configure. We will also compare the features that each one provides, and give our opinion on which system works best. Another evaluation we can make is how easy it was for us to change things that we do not like. If we try to implement changes through coding, it is worthwhile to compare how well documented the code is and how long it took to implement our changes. It is also worthwhile to say something about how well each system is documented in general, i.e. concerning installation, features, and frequent problems.

Another question that we will answer is how much functionality we can get out of system given our hardware constraints. We are limited as to processor speed because the machine we will are installing Freevo and MythTV is a P3, 450 MHz. Freevo requires at least a 400 MHz processor. MythTV does not have a set requirement, only stating that the faster the CPU, the better the user's experience. To overcome this difficulty, we are purchasing a higher end video capture card. Cheaper cards, also known as "frame grabbers", capture frames of video and have the software encode the video stream to MPEG-2 format. Encoding is CPU intensive, and as we are limited on CPU speed, we decided get a Hauppauge PVR-350 card. This card has special hardware to encode frames, thus freeing the CPU. Working with a slower CPU may seem disadvantageous, but it will be a more interesting experiment. It will be interesting to compare how well Freevo and MythTV work under limited means. It also will be helpful to people who have an old machine lying around that they can experiment with. Our research will help them see how good of a multimedia system they can get if they're willing to pay a little extra money for better hardware.

Why Bother?

As noted in the introduction, Microsoft is making a big move towards monopolizing the media center market. While Tivo is still an option that runs Linux, we are looking to provide the full power of a desktop PC combined with all the features of a PVR. We wish to demonstrate the ingenuity of what the Linux community has come up with to combat Microsoft's hegemony. The Linux community has come up with projects to combat Microsoft's dominance in each and every one of their initiatives, and we wish to show the ability of the Linux community at large to come up with free, easy-to-use solutions for almost any problem out there in the computing world today.