Multimedia

MythTV is great for capturing MPEG2 broadcast streams with a TV tuner card. However, its built-in software transcoder leaves a lot to be desired. The format (NuppelVideo, or .nuv) uses an older MPEG4 codec that’s inferior to the latest ones. Here’s how to produce better and smaller conversions in Ubuntu, by replacing it with Handbrake. Setup Start by adding the Handbrake launchpad PPA, then refresh your list of software sources.

The Pogoplug Classic is a popular item on eBay and online retailers, often selling for less than $20. It was marketed as a way to share media like external hard drives on your home network (it has several USB ports). The company behind it hopes you’ll use their service to back up your files in the cloud. But hobbyists discovered they could root it, install their own version of Linux, and use it for much more than a file server.

For sharing your family’s music collection, it’s hard to beat the simplicity of the Firefly music server. It uses the DAAP protocol, allowing others to access it from iTunes or Rhythmbox. With Firefly, your spouse can happily use their Mac or Windows PC for playback while you do the same with Linux. (1) Get Firefly running on Debian/Ubuntu by installing a single package: sudo apt-get install mt-daapd (2) Then edit the file /etc/mt-daapd.

We’re used to accessing multimedia content on the net through our web browsers. The browser makes sense when you’re viewing video like YouTube. However, it can be overkill for listening to a music station. There are a couple of excellent Linux applications that you can run from a terminal window. They also consume fewer resources, making them perfect for lower end hardware. Plus, they can even filter out the periodic ads, giving you a commercial-free listening experience.