Open Source Home Entertainment Systems

May 3, 2007

After living with Apple Tv for a little while I'm thinking back to the open source entertainment system I sketched out years ago. Where is something like that?

Knowing I couldn't be the only person wanting such a thing I recently went looking for existing projects. What kind of open source entertainment in your living room options are there these days?

First, what are we looking for? I think an ideal system would bring the following into my living room (the fake screenshot above is a quickie I did):

An Entertainment System Should Bring The Following Into My Living Room:

• hd videos I own
• video podcasts
• music I own
• api-accessible content streamed over the internet such as YouTube videos and Flickr photos
• web radio
• pc-based games
• weather
• photos I own
• rss feeds
• recorded tv
• calendar synced with my computer's via iCal feed

Apple TV does a very tiny portion of some of this list and Netgear's Digital Entertainer HD does even more though with limitations.

What would be great is an open source option(s) that would allow more flexibility...

"Myth Tv is a Linux application that turns a computer with the necessary hardware into a digital video recorder, a digital multimedia home entertainment system, or Home Theater Personal Computer."

It has an impressive set of functionality. In addition to its Tivo-like recording functionality it has modules that handle: photos, weather, digital video, rss feeds, simple pc games, even a VOIP video phone plug in... but no video podcasts that I know of (yet?).

"Clutter is an open source software library for creating fast, visually rich graphical user interfaces. The most obvious example of potential usage is in media center type applications. We hope however it can be used for a lot more.

"Clutter uses OpenGL (and soon optionally OpenGL ES) for rendering but with an API which hides the underlying GL complexity from the developer. The Clutter API is intended to be easy to use, efficient and flexible."

23 years old Londonite Neil Patel is working on a slick TV interface using Clutter and has posted a few screenshots.

Permalink 1 Comments

Comments

1. wow power leveling

   WOW Power Leveling | WOW PowerLeveling | cheap power level | power leveling

   wow power leveling
   www.feelingame.com/
   wow powerleveling
   www.feelingame.com
   

   November 30, 2007

Post Your Comment

Your Name

Your Website

Comment Title

Comment

Please enter what you see above: