** Sorry about the long email, just wanted to share some thoughts ** Hi All,
Just thought I'd share my ideas and experience about Freevo. A couple of months ago, I decided to create my own little entertainment system connected to the tv. At first I wanted to setup a pc with linux and then design and program my own little interface for movie watching and playing games. I had just replaced my P4 2G, so it's was a suitable for the new system. Here are the specs : Intel P4 2Ghz 128 MB RAM (still want to upgrade this) Nvidia GeForce FX (not sure which one, bought a cheap one, wanted to put my old card in the new system) 80 GB harddrive DVD-ROM 100 MB network card Choosing the linux distro was easy, I fell in love with gentoo about a year ago and thats the only distro I really use. I setup a basic gentoo system with mplayer. For many months I didn't have any time to program any interface and movies and dvd's were watched using xterm and keyboard (not nice for in the living room). The idea was to have a complete entertainment system, except not looking like a computer (ie. no mouse, keyboard, ugly box, etc.). My gf bought my a nice black case with blue lights which she saw and it encouraged my to start working on the system. I quickly discovered that programming my own system with lirc, LCD, frontend to mp3 playing, movies, dvd was not going to be a week job. So I started looking at alternatives and I found Freevo, I fell in love with the screenshots and decided that this is what I'm going to try and do (after some research, ofcourse)... I got freevo emerged on the system which is now called the (wait for it *drumroll*) "VideoSystem", prob not the best of names but hey... After some configuring and reading the docs over and over (isn't that always the way), i got it running and could immediatly play mp3's, watch dvd and movies on disk, although it still needed some setup because the wrong settings was selected. I spent the rest of the day setting up all the different kind of default settings for freevo. In the past two weeks I've setup the system to do the following : -> Plays mp3, any mplayer movie format and dvd's -> Perfectly rips my music cd's to mp3 (nearly have my whole collection on the system), though I find that the ripping is a bit slow -> Cover images downloaded for all the international cd's I have. I can't find any of my local SA cd's on the cover search. -> Every song and album correcly labeled -> Movies images and information for all my movies on the system -> Get my slashdot headlines every day (although it would be nice that when I select the headline that it gives me a small description, instead of a link for more information). I like to to get the general stories everyday and if it interests me then I'll get on the net and check it out. -> Get my daily dose of my fav cartoons (check out the new tips and tricks page on the freevo wiki) -> got xmame setup with my roms, plays the game and shows the right title and screenshot when I'm in the games menu -> I managed to get a gamepad working on the system and play my mame games with it. -> LCD support, using pyLCD. I had to setup my 24x2 lcd display as a 20x2 before it worked with pyLCD (fixes ?) -> Lirc Support, the whole system is now fully controllable with my remote, although i find it very sensitive, can I change the repeat rate (fixes ?) -> DVD navigation using Xine -> TV Guide Annoying problems : -> The annoying black screen which X did after x minutes of idle time, the only way to get rid of it, is to press a key on the keyboard, remote keypresses got no response, got it disabled (blanking), found fix on the freevo faq. -> I always wanted to watch dvd's with the Navigation Menu they come with and not select some or other title. I installed xine, uncommented two lines in my local_conf.py and it worked !! Amazing, I am re-checking all my dvd's to see the menu's and the special features. I had some problems with xine, where it wasn't so smooth but got it fixed by setting the dma for my dvd drive. (check your dma guys !! It makes a huge difference) -> Remote sensitivity, especially when I try to get new info on the movies using imdb, sometimes it automatically sees my keypress and it selects the first move in the list (usually one of 1914) -> The mame interface is very difficult to navigate through all the games. Adding the screenshots helped, but the following would also be nice : Maybe have an option where you can select a letter from the alphabet and it will show you all the roms starting with the letter. I think if you have a complete mame set then it will be a hell of a problem getting to the last couple of days. I've also been thinking of tinkering the with plugin to let it give more info about each game. I understand that work on the mame plugin is still very under development, just thought I would give some ideas. -> Would it be difficult to add some progress to the cd ripping ? The current progress status sucks ! Things I still want to add to my system : -> I've got a flyvideo tv card using the saa1734 chipset, still want to get it working on a 2.4.20 kernel (any ideas ?). And setup the whole tv section, at first I wasn't planning on using it, but now that it's so far, i'd really like to try it out. -> Hack at the mame pluging and try to improve it lots (can I ?), it's a good way for me to learn some python. -> Bigger harddrive! - the ease of the system helped the get the drive nearly full. Why ? Because my gf can use it now and she is continuously enjoying herself by putting our music cd's on the system :) Damn, I love her ! -> setup a bootsplash, the only thing that still makes it looks ugly is the bootup, but got autologin working and it then starts x with freevo -> setup other game emulators. Get second gamepad to work. Things I'd like to see added to Freevo -> Config interface -> DVD ripping, I can rip dvd's at the moment with a script I put together and mplayer, but I'd like to have something in the freevo interface (with progress bars !) -> Better Mame support -> Better tvguide layout -> Plugin which will allow me to navigate a folder full of text files and then display them in a readable font on the tv. -> Better documentation, it's clear to me that freevo consists of lots of features and options which aren't even documented yet. ** Summary ** I think thats about all, can't think of anything else right now. It basically comes down to the following (for me anyways). Freevo is a great system, which lots of nice features and it looks, works and play excellent. The only drawbacks I can find is the configuration, although I enjoyed scratching around in the config files, I'm pretty sure not everybody feels the same way, and the incomplete documentation (being worked on atm I think). Freevo has covered all my needs and after spending some time setting it, it runs beautifully !!! I love it and my friend are getting jealous because it works so well (I'll bet they are going to bring some pc's soon so that I can setup the same system for them). I'm also very impressed with the way the plugins are handled and the ease of writing new plugins. Expect some from me soon. Congratulations from me to the developers. Sorry for any mistakes in this *long* email, i quickly typed it, and at the moment I'm very tired, sat up all night playing mame games, ripping music cd's and watching movies, check out the cartoons, etc, etc, etc... Tom Van den Bon ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: SF.net Giveback Program. Does SourceForge.net help you be more productive? Does it help you create better code? SHARE THE LOVE, and help us help YOU! 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