I’d like to setup a HTPC software in my living room, running on this tiny computer … I had a look at various softwares but i’d prefer one implemented in Python, so that extending would be quite easy.
I’ll mainly use it to have tv channel schedule (XML-TV), listen music (ResPyre), and handle video content. The machine won’t be able to handle PVR-like usage, but it’s not critical since i’m not TV-addicted :-)
So, first off, i looked at the widespread MythTV, and it’s really a pain in the ass to setup, then it’s easy to understand the success of KnoppMyth (a full blown linux distro including the Myth out of the box). Anyway the main killer feature of MythTV is TV time-shifting, in this particular field it rocks, but i don’t need that feature, i’m not inclined to install KnoppMyth, so i forget MythTV.
Next, i had a look at the Python powered Freevo. The website seems dead, Freevo’s 1.5 code is a mess, but hey, there’s a rewrite taking good shape! In fact Freevo 2 will be a good candidate for me, architectured around Kaa which is an amazing Python multimedia (GUI, EPG, …) framework using a bunch of good bricks like Evas and Imlib2, allowing full-blown effects in Freevo. Well i tried it, and it looks good, even still in heavy development. The configuration is quite simple, it’s my best candidate for now, and guess what ? Plugins seem really a piece of pie to implement :-)
Any other HTPC challenger ? (please no MS Media Center, my box runs linux :)
update: for a more in-deep view of MythTV gaz usine, check http://revision3.com/systm/mythtv/