HTPC

Fedora HTPC is about building a Home Theater system based on Fedora distribution.

Discussion

Currently active people can be found from #fedora-htpc@freenode irc channel.

Hardware

P5E-VM HDMI is one of the first motherboards capable of outputting audio through HDMI interface and thus good choice for HTPC platform.

Video

It has Intel G35 Chipset which needs the xorg-x11-drv-intel X-driver package.

Fedora 10/rawhide drivers have problems (bug #496614) with hanging video and thus one needs to be sure what version of intel driver is used. Following drivers are known to work:

2.6.0-14.fc11

Audio

P5E-VM has RealTek ALC883 audio chip. Supporting kernel modules are:

snd_hda_codec_intelhdmi snd_hda_codec_realtek snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec

Software

Kodi (formerly known as XBMC)

Pretty easy to set up as a standalone, dedicated system. Requires rpmfusion repositories enabled before installation.

Fedora 20:

rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-20.noarch.rpm
rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-20.noarch.rpm

Easy setup-packages are available at http://tuju.fi/fedora/20/.

package xbmc-systemd makes it start straight after system bootup
package xbmc-htpc pulls all other HTPC related and useful tools (Lirc, debugging, NFS, Samba, etc)

Packages assume that system has been installed with minimal package collection/installation profile, thou they work in any system. Lirc is not set up as each system is different depending on IR-receiver and remote control.

VDR

VDR is terminal for digital-TV broadcasting. Because of that - it needs a receiver card to start up. Even it has a lot of features and plugins suitable for media server, card reuquirement in cases where receiving is not done, complicates things.

MythTV

VLC

If using S/PDIF digital output, the option --spdif option must be given.

Media Explorer

http://media-explorer.org/
yum install media-explorer

People

nick	f rel	hw	sw	status	notes
Messerting	F11	Asus P5E-VM HDMI Terratec Cinergy C HD PCI DVB-C		In use, but unstable	True 1366x768 over HDMI, use "nomodeset" kernel parameter. xorg.conf MythTV pre-0.22 (svn trunk), mantis driver from s2-liplianin.
tuju	f10 + rawhide + fusion	Asus P5E-VM HDMI	vlc		plays video, audio works through onboard RCA coaxial S/PDIF.
tuju	f14 + fusion	Asus P5E-VM HDMI	xbmc		plays video, audio works through onboard RCA coaxial S/PDIF. HDMI audio does not work out-of-the-box, don't know why.
tuju	f15 + fusion	Asus P5E-VM HDMI	xbmc	tested, didn't work, reverted to f14.	kernel video driver i915 gives blank screen without nomodeset kernel parameter. If that is set, setting xorg resolution with xorg.conf or xrandr fails.
tuju	f18 + fusion	Asus P5E-VM HDMI, usb uirt	PA, xbmc, lirc, NFS	2013-01: PulseAudio over HDMI works. Issues with DTS video and FLAC audio playback.	Minimal system, no display manager, nor desktop. Starts with systemd to htpc target. Uses native Pulseaudio everywhere. Storage on NFS. Issues: Video playback speed too fast with HDMI DTS bug 14012. Video playback is not not smooth if DTS problem is not active, probably related to video scaling as it affects to it. Audio stuttering while playing FLAC audio bug 13902.
hahlo	F15 + fusion	Biostar tp45 leadtek winfast 210			Video works well in Loewe 26" tv but no audio.

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