JR's Media Box configuration

It's Dead Jim...

Right, so the livingroom media box is n'more.

Well, it is more. It's just doing duty over at a friends house and streaming Hulu content. As for me, it's n'more.

Why? Well, a few reasons. First off, I wasn't using it enough to justify having it. The Wife uses the Satellite and TiVo more than anything else. As far as a living room browser/picture box, I since acquired a Wii, which does both rather well. Aside from that, I usually just lug out the lap-top and plug it into the config if I want to run something beefier.

Does this mean the death of the Living Room PC? Well, no, but much like the Living Room Toaster or the Kitchen Ottoman, it only makes sense to have something somewhere you actually plan on using it. I'll also note that I've currently got a Neuros OSD box doing duty as my backup DVR. I've got it sharing a drive off of a web server allowing me to watch recorded TV on my iPod Touch should I so desire. And you know, that works too.

The Hardware:

• Travla C134-Black
  Via EPIA M10000 Nehemiah MB
  512 MB Memory
  40GB HDD
  CD ROM
  
• a wireless keyboard/mouse
  (Final version does not have the remote. Big deal, I saved $20.)
• Netgear 54Mbps Game adapter
  Left over from previous build. Obviously, this can be replaced by something cheaper and more USB.

The Software:

• Windows XP Home (Again, left over so it's cheap.) Please also note that using Windows is a concious decision based on end use and general simplicity. For the end goal, using Linux/Mac introduces non-standard elements and therefore unwanted complexity. Much like game consoles, these things work better the fewer curveballs in the makeup.
• JR's Software Installation Pack:
  These pretty much get installed on any PC I use.
  • Firefox* (not as the default browser, sadly. I have it installed though since i prefer it as a browser.)
  • Avast Home Antivirus
  • Yahoo! Music Engine
  • TweakUI
  • RealVNC
  • Speedfan
  • ActivePerl
  • TBD: Solid Firewall package. ZoneAlarm currently too broken to be useful.
    Currently relying on MS Firewall and firewall in NAT
• VLC
  
• BBC's RealPlayer
  The cruft free one
• Quicktime Alternative
  The cruft free one
• MediaPortal
  Fairly robust, but still quite experimental, free media kit.
• Y!Go TV
  a package I've been screwing around with lately. It's a free media center package from Yahoo! that ties in with stuff there. See my initial review Don't install Y!Go TV. Having actually tried using it, it's horribly broken. I hope that it will get better, but it's no where near there yet.
• Microsoft IE
  This is not a popular choice by me, but I need it for several of the linked-to radio sites to operate correctly.
• Custom start page
  This is a simple html file listing out the stream sources for various radio stations myself or my wife might listen to. It's installed as a Active Desktop page and allows my wife to quickly select audio streams. Sadly, ie properly kicks over one of the audio streams to media player, but firefox doesn't. Once I figure out what the required voodoo is to get this working right, however, I fully expect to switch back to firefox as my default browser.
  Also note that eventually I'll probably replace this link with MediaPortal, however several issues with that package (dependancy on the keyboard, CPU demands, etc.) are preventing me from running that package full time. I expect these problems to be addressed in later versions.

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