media-box 0.26

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
Enhancements:
- 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