My PCBlog
These days, buying a decent plasma is often a lot more expensive than building your own media center. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, a media center is basically a PC that’s focused solely on media playback. Check out our PDF guide on how to set up your own media center, written by Stefan Neagu.
For the past year or so, I’ve been using Windows 7 on my media center. It’s quick, smooth, and the new Windows Media Center makes it an incredible improvement over Vista. It also supports most PCI TV tuners. Lately, I came to realize the stupidity of all it. Television shows haven’t been accounting to much lately, and the Windows 7 price tag isn’t worth it if you’re only using it for music and movies.
Enna
Although Boxee seemed the more obvious choice, it loses the high ground if you lack a decent internet connection. Just when I was about to give up hope, I heard about Enna – an incredible open source Linux media center, developed by the GeeXboX team, and ready for its first public release.
Enna can be installed on top of your Linux distro (e.g. Ubuntu) as a standalone app. But if you don’t want to make “the switch”, you can just use the GeeXboX live CD. You can boot Enna straight from the disk, without installing any alternative operating systems. If you want, you can even keep your default Windows installation running underneath.
Movies and Music
Keep in mind that the Enna Linux media center is a very standard app. It packs the very basic features in a most enticing and graphical user interface. If you’re looking for a surplus of widgets and online connectivity, you’re probably looking for Boxee.
That said, if you’re a standard media freak, Enna should sate your initial hunger, especially for a first public release.
Enna is great for browsing media files on your hard disk – both video and audio. You can also use Enna to pop an old-fashioned DVD. Sadly, this first release does not yet support audio CDs. This feature is promised to be included in one of the other upcoming releases, together with podcast support and VDB TV tuner functionality.
Photographs and Books
Apart from video and music, you can also use the Enna Linux media center software for photo slideshows. Next time your mother-in-law celebrates another wrinkle, surprise her and the rest of the family with a stunning slideshow. I’m not much of a picture-person myself, but I love to use slideshows to decorate a room, and create a pleasant ambience.
This last feature came as a surprise to me. In the bookstore, you can grab your favorite books and comics from the web, and read them from the couch. Enna currently supports GoComics and OneManga for content synchronisation.
Obviously, you want be able to read Shakespeare on your media center, but you can flick through a few (web)comics when you’re bored. As the names suggest, you can access both western comic panels and Japanese manga. Download Enna Media Center here.
What do you think of Enna? Or do you prefer another media center? Tell us which and why in the comments section below!
I'm sorry for the following rant but anything that does not get you premium HD content is a half-a$$ed device. unless of course your idea of HD is watching your local news team? Eyetv's entire lineup falls short of providing a path for accessing full HD TV.
s-video?! component?! are you kidding me? is this a tech blog or stay at home moms learning to browse the internets?
EyeTV is garbage, and you should be ashamed for using it for HD tv viewing. Although, their devices are excusable if you are encoding vhs or other media I suppose. I tried the eyetv 250 hdplus super duper blah blah and it was had a significant delay and was choppy at times in display the few hd cable channels it could carry. For anyone who is used to real hd content, this is a joke. I'll stick to fancast, hulu, netflix etc.
Additionally I think its ridiculous that I cannot play other sources on the imac- no real hd tv options (especially if your talking about HBO or NFLhd etc), you cannot hook up an xbox/ps3 to it. does apple really think I am going to go to the itunes store if they just lock out other sources?
as a pc user who wanted a new toy the 27iMac is beautiful but I feel handcuffed.
Watching TV anytime, anywhere is now possible. No, I'm not talking about Tivo. Instead, we're talking about watching Television on your laptop – that's right, the 8lb computer you carry with you to Starbucks. It's a lot easier than lugging your TV to a coffee shop to catch The Office on Thursday nights.
There are several options for watching TV on your laptop:
Downloads – This is probably the most ubiquitous TV timeshifting solution to catching your favorite TV shows when you want on your laptop. iTunes started the trend, offering downloads (currently at $1.99) hours after the show airs. The quality is good, the show selection is good, and the technology is easy. And of course if you want to see your favorite shows really small, you can always put them on your video iPod!
Amazon followed the trend by recently adding TV shows to their download store. Amazon has an advantage over iTunes by now having the shows of NBC, of which Apple will no longer carry new episodes after the current contract expires. So if you are interested in seeing My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, ER, and other NBC favorites, head to Amazon.com.
Online Streaming – Several networks now offer shows for online viewing. NBC, for instance, offers several shows (including the Thursday night lineup) right after the West Coast airing. NBC, notably, offers shows with only one “made for the internet” commercial between segments, earning them advertising dollars and saving you time (the one hour season premire episode of The Office clocked in at 41 minutes online). Missed Dancing with the Stars? It's on ABC.com. Check the network site of your favorite show – most of the more popular shows are online after broadcast, and more are added all the time. My question is when is House going to be offered online? Only watching it one time isn't enough to catch all the good lines!
TV tuner card – For the average computer user, it's is much easier to get a TV tuner card to work with Windows Media Edition. For a laptop, simply hook up to your USB port, configure the included software, attach your cable and a/v connections, and you are set. This is good if you want/have to watch TV in a room that doesn't have a TV, or the picture is better on your laptop – otherwise you might as well hunker down on the couch in front of the actual TV.
One good use for this method is if you are watching what TV execs like to call a “Dishwashing Show” – you are in the middle of doing something else (in this case, work on your computer), but you want to listen in on your show and check in every once in awhile. A ball game that you aren't paying rapped attention to would be a good example of this.
Check out the PlusTV USB 2.0 Analog Stick ,(which is currently $25 with good reviews at Buy.com). It also records shows for you. At that price, you can't go wrong.
Slingbox – Ah, Slingbox. Everyone has heard of Slingbox, but I don't know that many people who have it. Slingbox works by streaming your TV signal to your laptop, where ever you are. You connect Slingbox (which looks, appropriately, like a box) from your TV connection to an Internet connection in your house (your cable/satellite or desktop), which then broadcasts it to your laptop, where ever you are. DVRs, cable, and satellite boxes can be controlled from your location (aka flipping the channel). You can only broadcast to one computer at a time (so you can't broadcast a show to all your friends' computers when you meet at Starbucks), but you can set it up to broadcast to different laptops at different times. The Slingbox software works on Windows, Macs, and certain mobile devices as well (such as smartphones and PocketPCs.
Slingbox current retails for $189 at Amazon.com.
MobiTV – MobiTV is a cool concept. MobiTV turns your PC, laptop, and even your cell phone into a TV. You don't have to install any hardware or software, just sign up for their service. While fairly geared towards the mobile phone market, it's a great way to watch TV on your laptop without having to install anything. Among the channel line up that MobiTV offers are Fox News Channel, The Weather Channel, Fox Sports, A&E, Fashion TV, Oh! Oxygen, and Biography Mobile. A great choice if you are a news junkie!
They offer a free trial at http://www.mobitv.com/ – check it out.
Life is busy and you don't always have time to sit in front of the TV and watch your favorite show in peace. Kids run around, the phone rings, or you may have to work late. But you don't have to be caught scratching your head next week trying to figure out what you missed – have your TV come to your laptop.
Tags: pctvtuner
Roger Fletcher