Smart Home Blog

LyngBox Media announced its new stylish, Linux-based satellite receiver LyngBox designed for European satellite TV enthusiasts. The IP-ready box combines an HDTV receiver/recorder with 160GB hard drive and dual DVB-S2/DVB-T tuners. Additionally LyngBox keep synchronized LyngSat Guide via web service.

The box offers 96MB of RAM and 32MB of flash. It has an Ethernet connection, as well as four USB 2.0 ports. A/V input/output includes digital HDMI, component, SCART, composite, optical S/PDIF, and analog stereo.

The LyngBox looks very impressive. It’s equiped by OLED display instead VFD (excellent solution!). The design of the LyngBox will be suitable for both live-and-breathe satellite enthusiasts and gadget and style sensitive consumers.

The LyngBox is available now in Europe for an undisclosed price.

[via LinuxDevices]

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Finally I got invitation to test the first “social” media center Boxee. Installation under Kubuntu 8.04 was pretty simple. I just added Boxee repository and install it using apt-get. After running the Boxee it automatically found media content in the standard Linux directories - Pictures, Videos and Music. It tried to guess the names of movies by their filenames and get information from IMDB. For those video files which weren’t be recognized cover were created using some frame from movies themselves.

The user interface looks pretty nice. It’s intuitive and allows to easily navigate by media files, control playback movies and music. It’s easy to specify new media source. Doesn’t matter where it is - on local PC or on some network share. Moreover, using Boxee it possible to listen Internet radio, which becomes very popular this time.

However the most interesting and original feature of Boxee is its social component. It allows to people find friends and share between them info about what they watch or listen (be careful with adult content ;)). Additionally they can rate or recommend movie or song. The very basic social feature is offered by Facebook add-in for Windows Media Center. But, for sure, Boxee is much better.

I heard an opinion about competition between Boxee and MythTV. Maybe in the future but currently Boxee don’t support PVR functionality at all. Taking into account that XBMC also misses LiveTV I can conjecture that Boxee won’t have it in the future. In any case, Boxee is good media center software integrated with social service. Will see its progress.

P. S. I can send the invitation somebody who’d like to play with Boxee. Just leave a comment here.

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Recently I found a nice article about home automation using open source software and OS Linux. It covers all aspects of smarthome - appliance control, media recording and streaming, security and surveillance system, telephony. Actually this is a brief overview. So, don’t expect to find there detailed instructions how to automate your home. But as a start point is really helpful.

P. S. LinuxMCE basically offers all features described in that article and much more.

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Recently I found information about new HTPC software - Boxee. The Boxee is a first “social” media center. it plays media from your computer and other devices in your home network, as well as connect you to various Internet sources that allow you to stream or download movies, tv shows, music and photos.
The Boxee was started in 2007 and is based on the XBMC open-source project. Currently two alpha versions of Boxee are available - for Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X. The Windows version is planning later this year.
There are no sreenshots or details on the project’s site. I sent request for alpha testing but didn’t receive invitation yet. Will share my experience when get and install it on my PC.

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New Linux-based commercial media center is gonna be ship in August. The Cirgon supports 1080i HD resolution and offers 320GB, 500GB, and 750GB hard drive options together with controls management and playback of music, photos, and video. The full spec of HTPC is available here. The price is starting at $2000.

Personally I’m happy to see another commercial product which uses Linux as operation system (Fedora in case of Cirgon). But as I see that HTPC misses a few important features. First of all, Cirgon is designed for HDTV. But it offers DVI output and not HDMI. Also the HTPC equiped by 10/100 Base-T Ethernet while Gigabit LAN is a standard de-facto now. And the last but important missed feature is PVR. This means that Cirgon cannot play, record and paused LiveTV. Taking into account the price Cirgon and missed features in my opinion it might be more reasonable to buy Popcorn Hour instead of it or build your own box based on VDR or MythTV.

In any case, it’s good tendency that producers started to use Linux for their commercial media centers.

[via LinuxDevices]

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