media-box 0.26 review

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media-box is a program to watch all kind of multimedia files using a computer. It suports playing DVD video, VideoCD, various movi

License: GPL (GNU General Public License)
File size: 456K
Developer: Andrej Bagon
0 stars award from rbytes.net

media-box is a program to watch all kind of multimedia files using a computer.

It suports playing DVD video, VideoCD, various movie files, Audio CD, various music files and watching various still pictures.

Main goal of this project is to have a dedicated computer in your living room by replacing your Hi-Fi component (DVD-player, CD-player). media-box runs in a linux environment so the need for computer power is very low.

Prefered system is a computer with at least 466MHz Celeron with 128MB of ram. Disk space is minimal, it works on 1GB partition but it can sure fit on a partition of 150MB or even less.

As it considers the sound output it is considered to have a sound card with digital out capabilities, so you can easily connect your computer with a dedicated external Dolby Digital receiver, but this is optional.

Graphics card should have a TV-Out feature, so you can watch your media content on TV. For getting the remote control over the whole program, you should make a hardware receiver or you can even buy one. Just make sure it is lirc compatible.

Software used to make this hardware work:
debian - linux distribution
xine-lib - library to play media content
ati.2 - ATI drivers for XFree86 4.2.1 - to get TVOut working
alsa - SB Live! drivers to get digital out sound
lirc - remote control software


What's New in This Release:
created upgrade script so on pressing 'n' in main window will start an upgrade
fixed start.sh script to use the /media-box/XF86Config-4 file
size of screen is now calculated from the width and height of the back.jpg picture (was fixed to 800x600) - beware tvout works only on 800x600.
fixed background of movie so it is black now. Subtitles of new xine lib displayed background image.
added new types of files to play (based on extension)
- audio
- aac
- mp4

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