[scales82]

Hi All,

I'm an ex-XBMC user (from the xbox 1 days), I stopped using it when I built myself a media center PC (for live tv and DVR) and started using WMC (all iterations, up to wmc7). Now that Win8 Is out, I feel myself not really that excited to move to the new OS and go through setting it all up again. What I have now does 'work' but it is a bit of a hassle when something goes wrong and I have to instruct my wife on how to fix etc. And to be honest im kinda over the whole Windows thing.


So I am seriously considering a move back to XBMC, especially now that PVR and Live TV is supported (a must for me). I was thinking of going straight into a full-on Ubuntu machine with XBMC so there is no other windows garbage clogging things up and hopefully make for a more seamless experience. However, there are things that I had setup nicely on the old Windows machine that I am not sure will work as well on the XBMC setup. Can someone help me through some of my concerns? Keep in mind i am a linux noob and only have a little experience with it. However I have a LOT of experience with computers overall.


1. Sleep mode! My windows setup will wake up to record something and go back to sleep on its own. - Will XBMC ubuntu do this? (previously used MST sleep tool)

4. Mediacentermaster - I use this to sort my library for mediabrowser (which i use to browse my library) What do most people use for this? This is a big one for me
5. Live TV - I know its supported, Does it appear on the main menu for ease of access? (much like WMC) or must you dig through menus to access it? Same thing with recorded shows...
6. Netflix
7. Hulu
8. Remote control - My HTPC case uses an iMon VFD setup, what do i need to do here?

All the storage is local, The machine is connected to the network but I only use that to transfer the odd file back and forth, otherwise its completley standalone.

Sorry for long winded post, I'd have a crack at all of this myself but I dont want the machine to be out of action for any lengthy time delays.... I thank you all in advance

[Atomic Zombie]

1. Don't know, It would depend on what backend you use
2. Piracy - Cannot be discussed here
3. "
4. Unknown, it looks like a matadata retrieval system, for that I use ember media manager.
5. Live TV Has a Menu entry, like movies and TV shows, so it will shop up on the home screen. Recorded is a submenu of Live TV (see this screenshot for an example)
6. There are supposedly ways. However due to Netflix using Silverlight, and silverlight not being available for Linux, no matter what it will be hacky to set up.
7. Unknown
8. I know OpenELEC (a cut down, 'appliance' version of XBMC) has some support for VFDs, however I have never used one.

[scales82]

thanks Atomic Zombie. I removed the offending portion of my post. Its not really important anyway.

It looks like it'll do pretty much everything I want then. The big thing really was the live TV. What back end is most used?

[Atomic Zombie]

That's hard to say. I personally use TVheadend, it's easy to set up and runs on linux. have a look in the 'PVR Help and Support' section of this forum for other supported systems.

[scales82]

cool thanks, Ive never setup a backend system before so its a bit new to me. Ill probably ditch hulu and netflix anyway so that might not matter much in the end.

[black_eagle]

You might want to check that your tuner hardware is supported under Linux. I have a PCI card in one machine thats fully supported but I have also got a USB DVB-T tuner that works under windows, but has no Linux support currently. There is a list of PCI DVB-T tuners that are supported at http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_PCI_Cards. Theres also a list in their wiki of supported USB tuners.

It's just something to be aware of