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!
Elgato has untroduced the EyeTV One to the US market, its lowest-priced TV tuner for DTV antennas for Mac solution for $119.95 (or $101 at Amazon).
EyeTV One delivers digital TV and HDTV channels straight to a Mac or PC, enabling users to watch and record the huge variety of TV shows that are broadcast over-the-air for free – it’s an HDVR for the Mac (or PC).
The product ships with Elgato’s EyeTV 3, which enables users to watch, pause, and rewind live TV on a Mac, as well as record shows, subscribe to a favorite TV series, and create Smart Playlists. EyeTV 3 has a built-in editor to remove unwanted content and can automatically send recordings to iTunes to sync with an iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV. Recordings can be shared over a local network with other Macs. Elgato also offers optional apps to stream live TV and manage recording schedules on an iPhone while away from home.
Users who have a Windows PC as well as a Mac can use EyeTV One with either computer. EyeTV One is compatible with Windows 7 and works with Windows Media Center.
Watching TV on your computer is very much a reality with ever-increasing processing power of computers coupled with widely available high speed internet connections. For those with a decent sized monitor and a good set of speakers; the experience of watching TV on the computer might be better than the actual TV.
There are a few ways through which to watch TV on your computer. One of the oldest ways and best ways to get true TV on your computer is to purchase a TV tuner card. This card fits in one of your card slots on your motherboard and allows you to directly connect an antenna or cable line to your PC. Through this you can surf your cable and watch TV (including live TV) in the same way you watch it on a traditional TV set. You can get a decent TV cable tuner card for fewer than 100 dollars, but this only work with full size desktop computers and it is best to have cable TV for this.
Another way to watch TV through your computer is to use your high speed internet connection to download episodes of your favorite shows. Legally many stations and studios now sell complete seasons of your favorite shows on sites such as iTunes. Legalities aside many file sharing sites also have many shows and movies available but you risk being fined or at the least ending up with a corrupt virus infested file. If you don't want to pay for your favorite shows or take the risks associated with illegal downloading, many sites have teamed up with TV stations and studios to offer streaming episodes of their shows on websites.
Many of these sites stream the shows in good quality, but you'll need high speed internet to watch through these websites. Also the picture quality and speed of transmission depends on site traffic and your connection. Usually in exchange for allowing you to watch shows for free, you may have to sit through small commercials or see ads alongside the video. Not bad for free on demand access to your favorite TV shows.
Streaming shows through these sites is great, but for the truest TV on the computer viewing experience it is recommended that you consider getting a TV tuner card, a good monitor, and some decent speakers for a full TV viewing experience. But for those with a budget or just looking for some shows, the streaming episodes or seasons for digital purchasing are just fine.
Tags: pctvtuner
Darren Anthony