So in my quest to create a media center PC MythTV didn’t hold the Holy Grail that I had hoped it would. It seemed to be geared more towards recording content and playing it back than playing currently stored content for which I was primarly searching. I’m not saying MythTV couldn’t do that, but it required more plugins and configuring that I wanted to spend.
I decided to move on to XBMC (Xbox Media Center). I had previously had XBMC installed on an old XBOX that I had and really liked how it worked and played. They had more recently come out with a version that would run on Linux so I figured it deserved a shot. After playing with it for a bit I was somewhat satisfied with it, but it was still missing the Hulu plugin that I was hoping for as well. This brought me to Boxee which is an extension of the XBMC project.
Boxee has a very nice UI and includes pretty much everything that I was looking for in my Media Center. It will play Hulu as well as a number of other streaming content, has built in bittorrent and plays almost every format known (including ISOs). The only thing that it doesn’t do currently is play Netflix, but I think there are some work arounds for it as well as they are working on solving that issue.
I had some difficult time getting the digital audio to work properly mostly due to issues with Linux (isn’t it always? 
), but I think I have it mostly ironed out now. I still can’t get the sound to work when I play an ISO file, but I’m sure I’ll get it figured out eventually and that isn’t deal breaking — yet.
I found this article where someone built a pretty decent set top box using boxee and a slim computer case that I might do as a second box for my bedroom.
Tags: media center, technology, tv
