From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Sat Oct 17 21:47:56 2015 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33D1EA17D6C for ; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 21:47:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd01@dgmm.net) Received: from outbound-queue-1.mail.thdo.gradwell.net (outbound-queue-1.mail.thdo.gradwell.net [212.11.70.34]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC4951DC1 for ; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 21:47:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd01@dgmm.net) Received: from outbound-edge-2.mail.thdo.gradwell.net (bonnie.gradwell.net [212.11.70.2]) by outbound-queue-1.mail.thdo.gradwell.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D7DC21E82 for ; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 22:47:54 +0100 (BST) Received: from cpc7-jarr12-2-0-cust882.16-2.cable.virginm.net (HELO amd.asgard.uk) (92.238.71.115) (smtp-auth username fbsd%pop3.dgmm.net, mechanism plain) by outbound-edge-2.mail.thdo.gradwell.net (qpsmtpd/0.83) with ESMTPA; Sat, 17 Oct 2015 22:47:53 +0100 From: Dave To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: How do I turn my FreeBSD desktop into a set-top box? Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 22:47:53 +0100 Message-ID: <11660930.NCbaWZNhqK@amd.asgard.uk> User-Agent: KMail/4.14.3 (FreeBSD/9.3-RELEASE-p24; KDE/4.14.3; amd64; ; ) In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Gradwell-MongoId: 5622c209.16c25-5409-2 X-Gradwell-Auth-Method: mailbox X-Gradwell-Auth-Credentials: fbsd@pop3.dgmm.net X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 21:47:56 -0000 On Saturday 17 October 2015 17:04:42 Aryeh Friedman wrote: > Any ideas? (What hardware and stuff out the ports collection).... please > keep hardware limited to anything available in a computer superstore like > MicroCenter (not special order or web only) > > I switched ISP's for the first time in 5 years and now have access to cable > TV for the first time in 15 years (I have not owned a TV for 10 years). > So I am very new to the hardware side of the the equation but I have worked > in streaming media so am at home on the software side. > > So far I have hooked the HDMI and speakers up to my monitor (I need to move > the back and forth between the sound card and the monitor currently). > > Here is the dmesg for the machine I want to set stuff up on: > Have a look at MythTV and Kodi. Both will install on a FreeBSD system, but both also are available as "images", ie Linux with everything already set up to "Just Work(tm)" Personally, I have Kodi running on twp Rasperry Pis (using OSMC/Kodi), a couple of FreeBSD boxes and a Windows box all sharing a central MySQO database. MythTV is a bit more involved with more options, eg seperate backend and multiple seperate frontends and IIRC can be a bit of a bugger to set up on FreeBSD (might have changed in recent years.) MythTV seems to have better support for off-air recording/transcoding/advert cutting but I've not used any of that. I don't use mine for live/off-air TV/recording but from what I've seen you need to be very, very careful with choice of tuners if using FreeBSD while Linux seems to be a bit more accommodating. Kodi seems to have much better support for streaming via various add-ons, especially those from 3rd-party repositories (or so I'm told. Some may not be entirely legal in some jurisdictions) In particular, my non-technical wife can easily handle Kodi using her tablet or smartphone as the remote with the Kodi Remote App.