Smart Home Blog

As you may know the modern TVs allow to watch media content not only from local sources but from network shares or online services as well. But producers limit functionality. For example, to get media content from the network share only DLNA can be used. UPnP or Samba are not supported at all. But thanks to open source enthusiasts there is a way to get more from your TV.

Project SamyGo offers alternative firmware for the Samsung TVs. Using this firmware you’ll able to mount NFS or CIFS/SAMBA network shares, receive media content from UPnP servers, use WiFi adapters 3rd-part companies, activate PVR functionality. Additionally you’ll have telnet access to your TV and ability to run custom scripts when TV switched ON.

Another project openlgtv offers alternative firmware for LG TVs. It also offers possibility to mount NFS or CIFS/SAMBA network shares supports UPnP and much more. Using USB Ethernet adapter you can add your TV in the local network even it doesn’t have built-in Ethernet port! There is another project for LG TVs – LGMOD v1.2, which additionally offers a web interface to configure your TV.

It’s good to see that consumers have a choice between limited official firmware and alternative one offered much more features. And number of those features is increased continuously.

As you may know Sony removed OtherOS feature from the latest PS3 firmware to avoid installation any other OS there. But madshaun1984 found the way to bypass that restriction. He was able to install Ubuntu and XBMC on the PS3. Here is a short instruction how to do it. Cool hack but without a practical application in my opinion. I think using PS3 as HTPC is a controversial decision. First of all it’s very noisy. When you play game it doesn’t matter. But when you watch non-action movie it can be really annoying. Secondly, the PS3 should be reboot if you want to watch movie after game or vice versa. It’d be much more convenient to buy or assemble compact, noiseless and non-expensive HTPC based on nVidia Ion and enjoy movies with it and games with PS3.

[via Engadget]

The video above demonstrates how to use Nokia N900 as a PS3 controller. You can do that using BlueMaemo and that instructions.

If your mythbackend crashes time to time the best way is investigate that case and find the reason. But if you cannot wait you can use pcsk (Process Creation’s Swiss-Army Knife) to re-run it after crash. Following brief howto describes the steps to configure pcsk and mythbackend to work together. But remember that there’s nothing more constant than temporary 🙂