Smart Home Blog

Recently GeeXboX announced its new software for HTPC called Enna. It offers a standard set of functions such playback video and audio, showing photos from local drives, USB storage or network shares. However, there is one unique feature in the Enna. It’s a BookStore allowed to read your favourite eBooks from different Internet content providers. Also the new GeeXboX media center software comes with VDPAU supports which is very important for HD video fans.

Enna development team has a huge todo list which includes adding games, integration with VDR to watch and record digital TV, supporting UPnP and DLNA. Long-term plans include online services integration (currently there is no one, even YouTube), Instant Messaging, VoIP Telephony and Video Conference and TelePresence. Souns very promising. But we’ll see the progress this summer.

To install Enna under Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) just add GeeXboX repository to your apt sources list and use apt to get it. Also note that Enna is a part of GeeXboX distribution. Users of other Linux distributions can install Enna from the sources.

Today the second beta version of LinuxMCE 0810 was released. I’d like highlight following changes there. The first one is very important for non English spoken countries. It’s support of UTF-8 (I participated in that task too). Thanks to that addition of new translations in the system will be simpler.

Another interesting change is improving of setup of graphic card drivers and adding of VDPAU support to the MythTV and Xine. So, I hope it’ll allow to playback MKV files using Xine and not Mplayer (I don’t oppose to Mplayer but the pause doesn’t work during MKV playback under my LinuxMCE 0710 installation).

The DVD with new 0810 Beta2 can be downloaded from the official LinuxMCE torrent. Note that you still use installation scripts to setup the latest version of LinuxMCE 0810.

This is a really good news for Linux-based HTPC owners. Mplayer recently added supports of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray codecs. The latest code in Subversion repository can do it with that DRM decryption patch. The full guide how to play and rip HD-DVD and Blu-ray disks under Linux can be found here.

I was asked a few times about possibility to play Blu-ray disk under LinuxMCE. So, with solution below it could be possible to do that.

[via phoronix]

Products, offered by UK based company Aleutia, can be good candidates to be HTPC or media client. They are tiny, noiseless and use very little power. However they have enough power for HD video playback thanks to nVidia Ion graphical platform.

Also you may peep inside the Aleutia’s PC using their Flickr photo stream. And even you won’t buy anything from Aleutia it might give you some useful ideas to build tiny and silent HTPC by yourself.

I wrote about HD networked media player Myka more then year ago. Since that time a lot of similar devices were released. Popcorn Hour is probably the best from them. But recently a new version of Myka was announced. And it looks exited! I cannot named it just player. It’s full featured HTPC!

The new Myka is based on nVidia Ion with GeForce 9400M and dual core Atom N330. It’s compact but has enough powerhouse for FullHD playback (thanks to Ion and VDPAU). It’s completely quiet because there is a passive cooling only. As the rest Ion based nettops Myka has VGA, DVI-I, HDMI, analog audio and coaxial/optical S/PDIF outputs, gigabit Ethernet, 6 USB and one eSata ports. It’s also sports optical drive and remote control with external USB IR receiver.

The Myka run the latest Ubuntu 9.10 as OS (yes, yes, it’s Linux-based!). However, Windows 7 can be installed as second operation system for additional $110. The Myka includes the most popular Linux media software such Boxee, XBMC and Hulu which allow to user watch video, listen music and see photos from internal HDD, USB storage, network shares or online services. I’d like to know if it’s possible to install software and modify configuration by user. If so the last feature can be added easily – possibility to watch and record satellite/terrestrial TV with VDR and USB DVB-S(2)/DVB-T tuner.

The Ion based HD player/HTPC Myka can be ordered from the producer web store at $379. Additionally Blu-ray drive ($255), 802.11 N card ($40) and 1TB HDD ($125) can be added. Good price for the good device in my mind!

See the Myka GUI screenshot and demo video after break
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