Ronnie Tucker » media

Boxee and the Acer Aspire Revo

Ronnie — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:29:09 +0000

Having tried XBMC on my Acer Aspire Revo, I thought I’d give Boxee a try. I’d heard such good things about it that it would have been rude of me to ignore it, and I have to say: I really do like it. Technically it’s not available for Karmic (Ubuntu 9.10) but thankfully it can easily be botched to work fine in 9.10.

The first thing to do is head over to the Boxee site and sign up with them: Boxee.tv. The reason for this is that Boxee is part XBMC, part social media. Boxee is based on XBMC but it has several useful addons that allow you to rate/favourite your media and recommend media to friends. All this is done via the Boxee website, hence the signup. Once you’ve signed up, you can go to the downloads page and see instructions on how to install Boxee by adding the Jaunty repo. And this is where you hit a snag. Boxee won’t install as it requires packages that aren’t in the Karmic, or Boxee, repo. So, to botch it, we grab some .deb files that are from Jaunty/other repos.

The files I needed to install before Boxee were:

liblzo1 – http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/pool/universe/l/lzo/liblzo1_1.08-3_i386.deb

libdirectfb – http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/d/directfb/libdirectfb-1.0-0_1.0.1-11ubuntu1_i386.deb

and libkrb53 – http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/i386/libkrb53/download

(source: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=60489)

Once I’d installed those, I could install Boxee and it’s dependencies without a hitch.

Once it’s installed, Boxee is found in Applications > Sound & Video.

Boxee's main screen

With Boxee running I added my local media folders and my wireless shared directories. From there, Boxee rips through your files guessing at their classification, but you can assign a media type to a particular directory if you wish. I was a bit unnerved when many of my video files weren’t showing up under movies, but I quickly realised that Boxee needed me to tell it what these files actually were. I’m sure it knew they were video, and probably movies, but it wanted to know exactly WHAT movie it was so that it could go and fetch me information and a cover of the movie, which is a nice touch. Same with audio files, it will automatically grab you album covers and band photographs.

Editing audio/video information is quite easy too, even without a keyboard, as it has an on-screen keyboard which is easy to use.

Boxee applications - basically Internet TV channels

As well as using your own media, in Boxee, you have access to dozens of ‘applications’ which are basically channels (above). Channels which are video podcasts and internet episodes. The list is quite varied and has everything from CNN, to Open lectures, to anime.

The only quibble I have with Boxee is that my (cheapo) remote control doesn’t work as well with Boxee as it did with XBMC. But obviously, that’s my fault for having a cheapo remote. It’s still usable, but it’s annoying that I don’t have a remote button for going back, I have to keep returning to the main menu and going forward from there, but at least the main play/ffwd/pause/stop work.

All in all, I’m really impressed with Boxee, I’ll definitely be keeping it and quite probably using it more than XBMC as XBMC has a few rough edges to it, but Boxee (even though it’s an alpha) is smooth as a smooth thing!

Look me up on Boxee and give me a shout, my username is ronnietucker. I look forward to your recommendations!*

* as long as they’re good Similar Posts:

Installing Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC on the Acer Aspire Revo

Ronnie — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:45:57 +0000

Acer Aspire Revo

I recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo with the idea of turning it in to a media center. I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and use XBMC (Xbox Media Center) as a front end. Here’s how I did it:

First I installed Ubuntu 9.10 to a USB stick. I did this using the USB Startup Disc Creator app which is installed, by default, with Ubuntu. It’s under System > Administration. I just pointed it to the ISO of 9.10, it detected my USB stick and off it went. So, with Ubuntu on my USB I popped the USB in to the Revo and booted it up.

When the Revo is turned on, it will make a beep (the POST – Power On Self Test), as soon as you hear that, hold down F12, that’ll give you a BIOS-like boot menu where I could choose from either the Revo drive, or my USB. Obviously, I chose my USB stick.

After a short time, Ubuntu loads, first thing I did was to make sure that my wireless would work, and it did, no problems there. So, I started Ubuntu installing…

On first boot of Ubuntu it asks you if you want to install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, without these, you can’t reach resolutions higher than 800 x 600, so you want to install them.

NOTE: The Revo can connect to an ordinary PC monitor, but I wanted to connect it to my TV. My TV didn’t have an HDMI port, but it did have a DVI port so, having bought an HDMI > DVI cable I booted Ubuntu to get a black screen. Only after much research did I find out that my TV couldn’t display anything above VGA (800 x 600). So, if you get display problems with the HDMI output of the Revo, it may well be your TV.

One other thing you may notice is the lack of sound. This is easily fixed by right clicking on the speaker icon in the top bar, in Ubuntu, and choosing ‘Sound Preferences‘. In that window choose the Hardware tab and in the drop down menu (beside ‘Profile:’, choose ‘Output Digital Stereo (HDMI)‘ and click OK. You should now have sound!

Anyway, with a new TV with HDMI, I booted Ubuntu and proceeded to install XBMC. To install XBMC, you need to add the XBMC PPA and install the xbmc package, in Karmic, this is done using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xbmc

For Intredpid and such-like, see the information on the XBMC wiki:

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=HOW-TO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubuntu_with_a_minimal_installation_step-by-step

So, with XBMC installed, I loaded it up and there it was:

XBMC main screen with the new Confluence theme.

Next I used another USB stick to copy some media files to the Revo HD to see if XBMC would play xvid, mp3 etc. Or would I need to install the Ubuntu extra. Yep worked fine, no need for me to install the Ubuntu extras myself.

Next, for me, the hard bit. Would it be possible to get wireless file transfers going between my desktop PC (also with Karmic) and the Revo. I eventually managed it (with little to no SAMBA experience), here’s how:

I did this on both my desktop machine AND the Revo:

Right click on Videos folder, which is the folder I want to share on my desktop and on the Revo, this could easily be the Music folder or whatever folder you’ve created. Select Properties from the menu, then the Share tab. Tick to ‘Share This Folder‘. If SAMBA is not installed, it’ll ask if you want to install it now, which you should. You’ll need to restart your session, but don’t worry – this won’t reboot the machine.

To share a folder (with SAMBA installed):
* right click on a folder and choose ‘Sharing Options‘
* tick the box to share the folder and also, if needed, tick the box to allow creation/deletion of files
* click ‘Create Share’ button.

Do the above for each folder on your desktop/Revo that you want to share.

If you try and connect to the Revo from the desktop (or vice versa) you’ll be asked for a password. What you need to do is ON BOTH THE REVO AND DESKTOP is, in a terminal, run:

sudo smbpasswd -a USERNAME

(USERNAME being the name of a user on the computer/Rev), supply a password for SAMBA to use with that user, then:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

NOW you can connect to the Revo from the desktop and vice versa, drag and drop files between them and, much my surprise (And delight) even stream from the desktop to the Revo!

NOTE: If you drag files to the Revo/desktop and get a permissions error, you probably haven’t ticked the box (mentioned above) to allow creating files. Once you’ve ticked the box, you’ll need to run the samba restart command, above. Failing that, you need to update your SAMBA install, check your package manager for newer files.

To finish off your media center, you’ll need a remote control. I bought a cheap CyberLink remote from eBuyer.com, plugged it in, Ubuntu recognised it and I could immediately use it in XBMC! The only problem is that I don’t have a button on the remote to return to the home screen in XBMC, but everything else works – I can play, pause, ffwd, raise/lower volume and so on.

—-

One alternative to XBMC, that I’ve been hearing good things about, is Boxee. It’s available at: boxee.tv, but it doesn’t work so easily on 9.10, only 9.04, but – according to what I’ve read – you can install the file liblzo1 from 9.04 on 9.10 and Boxee should then work fine in Karmic (source: Popey.com). If I get bored of playing with XBMC (doubtful) and need another project, I may try installing Boxee… watch this space!Similar Posts:

Creating an iPod playlist in Amarok

Ronnie — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:07:51 +0000

The one thing I love about mp3 players is that you can just stick it on random and it’s like having your own jukebox. But what about when you want to play only certain songs? Or play only those certain songs on random?

Well, that’s when you need a playlist. Amarok does it’s own playlists, but that’s to create a playlist of songs that are on your hard drive. This tutorial is on how to create a playlist for your iPod using the songs that are on your iPod.

First things first (I’m assuming you already have songs on your iPod and you’ve used Amarok to do this) connect your iPod to the PC (it should auto-mount, most new distros recognise iPods) and load up Amarok. Click the DEVICES tab (down the left side of the screen) then click the CONNECT button at the top left of the window:

You should now see a list of all the songs, and albums, that are on your iPod. At the top of that list are two red folders, Podcasts and Playlists.

I’ve read tutorials that say you should right click on songs/albums and add them to a playlist, while the options are there to do that, it showed nothing on my iPod. After much searching, and trial and error, I found that dragging and dropping is what worked for me. So, first of all, lets create a new playlist.

Right clck on Playlists and choose ‘Create Playlist’:

And give your playlist a name, I’ll make one for AC/DC.

There it is, but it’s empty. If the playlist had songs in it, it would have that little + symbol beside it, like my Metallica playlist has. Let’s put some songs in there.

To add songs, simply open out your artists and albums (by clicking the + symbols beside them) and drag the song titles up to the playlist.

All I did was drag ‘Rock N’ Roll Train’ up, on to ACDC, and let go. Keep doing that to add songs. If I click the + symbol beside ACDC, I can see what’s in that playlist so far.

TIP: Holding down the Ctrl key lets you pick several songs to drag up in one go.

But what if I want them to play in a different order? Simply drag them arounf within the ACDC playlist.

To keep your playlist on your iPod, click the DISCONNECT button (top left)

And to be extra safe, right click on the iPod (on your desktop, I’m using Ubuntu 9.04) and EJECT it.

Done!

Similar Posts:

uShare + Xbox 360 = media streaming goodness

Ronnie — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:57:04 +0000

I have an old Xbox (with modchip) that I FTP video to, and use as a media player, but I decided to try and get streaming media working between Ubuntu and my shiny Xbox 360. Wow, what a to-do! It’s not exactly rocket science to get it working, but it took a lot of trial and error, Googling, and other smart peoples blog posts, before I finally got it working. Here’s how I (eventually!) did it:

First, install uShare. You can get it from the Ubuntu repos. As of writing, it’s at version 1.1a

Ok, now to configure uShare using sudo, so:

sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf

You need to find the following entries, and make sure they look like this:

USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_DIR=/path/to/your/media
ENABLE_XBOX=yes

DANGER! DANGER! You must make sure there are no spaces in those entries (before, or after, the equals) and the ‘yes’ MUST be in lower case. No, I’m not kidding. I had ENABLE_XBOX as ‘YES’ and it just would not work until I changed it to ‘yes’. Also, complex names in the USHARE_DIR seems to make it show ‘No videos found’. Rename the directory, or copy your files to another directory. It might be the use of a space that causes this, not sure.

Not sure if this is 100% necessary, but several posts in other blogs have said that the ENABLE_XBOX option is a bit sporadic, so it’s best to hardwire uShare to force an Xbox compatible startup. So we need to edit another uShare file:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/ushare

…and add this line at the beginning of the script (I put it after the comments):

USHARE_OPTIONS=-x

My PC has several eth options, I use eth1 for my original Xbox, so didn’t want to tinker with it, eth4 is for my router, so that left eth3. So to bring up eth3 (in my case):

sudo ifconfig eth3 192.168.3.1

Now we need to restart uShare using the init script:

sudo invoke-rc.d ushare restart

NOTE: do above command twice, I know it seems crazy, but the second time I run that command it gives me a warning, but it works fine. If I run the command only once, the 360 can’t connect to my PC. Might just be a quirk on my PC.

Also do the above init to refresh your file listing. You can enable the web interface if you want to refresh files, but the init command works just as good. Remember to run it twice though!

OK you’re done.

Turn on your Xbox 360, go to My Xbox, across to the Video Library, and click. You should, in the next screen, see ‘ushare’ at the bottom of the list. Click it, and it should connect to your share directory. Voila! If you have mp3’s in your share dir, then come out of the video library and go in to the music library, they are all using the one share directory.

Playing AVI/DivX/XviD seems to be a bit of a problem. But one poster on the internet came with the simplistic solution of just renaming .AVI files to .WMV. Works like a charm!

NOTE: The above might work even if you have a PS3 as there are no changes made on the 360, only in installing uShare and configuring it in Ubuntu.Similar Posts: