Ask Engadget: Can you turn my clunker laptop into a media center?

We were keeping it simple last week on Ask Engadget, helping in Perry's quest for a stripped-down GPS unit. This time Xtopher Robin is looking to do more with less, with big hopes for his aging laptop. If you'd like your own question answered by the best tech minds ever to click a comment submit button, be sure send it to ask at engadget dawt com for next week's round of fun. And here's Xtopher:

"I have a 3 year old laptop (1.89GHz Athlon XP, 1GB of RAM, 64MB Radeon) loaded with all kinds of music, pictures, movies, etc, and I'm looking for a good media center program. I have XP Pro, and want a "MCE-like" experience. I have tried MediaPortal, but I'm less than thrilled with the experience. I'm looking for something that can be controlled via a Bluetooth controller (ie: Salling Clicker through a cell phone, Wiimote, PDA, etc). Any ideas?"

Sounds like a tall order for those specs, but perhaps a bit of Linux will give the thing a new lease on life? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[J Ozer @ Aug 16th 2007 9:26PM]

What about snapstream? In terms of polish thats probably the closest thing to Media Center. There is also Meedio, although that seems much less popular.

Of course, you could try... Media Center. Snapstream is already up near the $80 mark, and XP Media Center is only about $100 from newegg. I have used all of these programs, and I definitely prefer Media Center.

[Simon Waddington @ Aug 17th 2007 1:35PM]

Thumbs up for Snapstream BTV... stick a $100 HD tuner in there and you'll have a better DVR than TiVo.

[adam @ Aug 16th 2007 9:33PM]

1) Sell laptop on ebay.
2) With newfunds buy and mod an xbox.
3) Put xbmc on it.
4) Enjoy.

[ryanwalklin @ Aug 16th 2007 11:05PM]

++, I heart XBMC

[gecono @ Aug 17th 2007 1:32PM]

XBMC is great, but it's lack of support for decent HD decoding has made me put it on the shelf. I'm now running media center ( vista version ) and I'm quite pleased.

[Typhoid Mary @ Aug 26th 2007 8:09PM]

XBMC does not lack HD support! The failure of all HD flavors lies with the xbox. Dont blame the software for something the hardware cant do.

Waiting for the linux port of XBMC myself before I take the 1080 dive...

[Jerry Szyce @ Aug 16th 2007 9:33PM]

try linuxMCE.com
Blows MCE away

[Jerry Szyce @ Aug 16th 2007 9:41PM]

Try LinuxMCE www.linuxMCE.com

Blows MCE away

[Pc_Madness @ Aug 16th 2007 10:14PM]

Cept for the fact LinuxMCE looks like it was designed by a two year old.

[Babau @ Aug 16th 2007 10:29PM]

Definitely try out LinuxMCE before buying a copy of... anything. It's free, after all. Why wouldn't you give it a spin?

Also, find me a 2 year old that can design purty alpha blended menus and I'll give you a shiny dollar. The GUI isn't as polished as Microsoft's MCE, sure, but it's FREE and doesn't require a cluster of supercomputers to run.

[Pc_Madness @ Aug 16th 2007 10:55PM]

Isn't as polished? What are you on, it barely classifies as a GUI.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Screenshots

Just because it has Alpha transparency doesn't make it good.

- No consistency
- Graphics are extremely poor
- the interface layout is bad anyway
- poor colours

I'd be embarrassed to show that off to friends. Its designed by people who know how to program but know nothing about ui design. (aka, Linux developers)

The UI is one of the most important parts. I would have to recommend MediaPortal over it, even though its not at all stable.

[NovaLand @ Aug 17th 2007 1:01AM]

Yeah, UI is more important than bugfixes, security and doing a proper whitebox bugtest. Therefor I work on the company called ....

[michael @ Aug 17th 2007 1:15AM]

@Jerry Szyce:

Can you explain how Linux MCE blows away Windows Media Center?

I've been using Windows Media Center on an Xbox 360 and it's wonderful. The UI is so easy to navigate across given it's vertical/horizontal UI, easy for a dpad on a remote. The UI is also very elegant, and doesn't really slow on mines. It works great as a DVR, guide, and about my whole TV navigation.

Plus, on the side, I can play games on my Xbox 360. I've seen screenshots of Linux MCE, and it's far from appealing. It doesn't seem to offer anything that Windows Media Center doesn't. I don't want to be such a downer, but really, Linux MCE is nothing compared to WMC. It really just works.

Now if only there were more affordable CableCARD systems...

[whatevas @ Aug 17th 2007 8:45AM]

Seriously, LinuxMCE does not look nearly as bad as Pc_Madness puts it. The screen shots page consists of a ton of shots from DIFFERENT UIs, if you pick one and tweak the colors to your liking it won't be bad at all. I haven't used it personally, but don't see many people complaining about usability either.

I'd definitely go with it. The man is trying to convert a clunker to a media center for heavens sake, not trying to decide btw that and a voodoo pc. The comments criticizing Linux without taking this to consideration look idiotic.

[Jerry Szyce @ Aug 17th 2007 10:05AM]

Can WMC do this?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2176025602905109829&hl=en

[Jeremy K. @ Aug 16th 2007 9:43PM]

I wouldn't call that PC a clunker. Maybe because of the video card, but everything else seems fine. Heck, I'm on an Athlon XP 2500+ (1.83ghz) and it is good enough for almost everything.

[Alex Lu @ Aug 16th 2007 9:48PM]

Hmm, what's wrong with 64mb of VRAM? My new macbook also only has 64mb and it plays every media program smoothly.

[Jerry K @ Aug 16th 2007 9:58PM]

I don't know about compatibility with a bluetooth controller, but GB-PVR has served me well; it seems to be mostly for television, but it has options for videos and photos as well as youtube videos. It has a lot of different options for configuration, so you may find your bluetooth to be a viable option. Here's the link. http://www.gbpvr.com/

[Tom @ Aug 16th 2007 10:00PM]

TVersity?

[encore @ Aug 16th 2007 10:16PM]

yeah, do not use linux for multimedia, it is all crap.:p

[soundboy64 @ Aug 16th 2007 10:37PM]

OS X86 and Front Row

[Foebea @ Aug 16th 2007 10:54PM]

Beyond Media is the best for home theater in my opinion. The app itself is not the best, but its open API is great. The showtimes plugin downloads currently in theaters and upcoming releases along with thier trailers, the DVD Library downloads details about your divx (most any format, really), dvd iso, and offline dvds, along with posters, actors, etc. When I play a movie it plays a random THX intro, then 2 random trailers of upcoming movies (configurable number of) and then starts the movie. Very fun to use. Not easy to use with Vista, but I got it working on mine. Works great on XP. no updates from the company for a LONG time, but again, its an open API and people are still writing for it. the most important plugins have already been written though.

[adnap4 @ Aug 16th 2007 11:40PM]

If you're going to be playing any HD video off of that I'd recommend downloading the CoreAVC codec. It does a much better job of playing H.264 than FFDShow on older systems. Also if you have a supported nvidia gpu in there you can get their codec to allow the video card decode MPEG2. Other than that, you're pretty much a no go on HD with a CPU that slow. I've got a 2500xp desktop and it's hit and miss with what HD recordings it can play.

Also if you have a firewire port or if you can add one you can capture the MPEG2 transport stream right off your cable's set top box. I think SageTV even has some plugins to allow you to change channels over the firewire cable.

[supagold @ Aug 16th 2007 11:47PM]

The only thing on linux even worth looking at is the XBMC port to linux. LinuxMCE is a joke, and MythTV is a great way to eat up hours and hours of your free time. XBMC is still in a pre-alpha phase, but it's evolving from what is currently the best media center experience out there. Last I heard, they're looking to get a reasonably stable build out sometime around October.

Alternately, have you considered actual MCE 2005? You could run it with your specs. It's pretty stable, supports a decent number of codecs, and has an active 3rd party developer community.

[None More Negative @ Aug 16th 2007 11:47PM]

Linux is not only perfectly suited for multimedia, it does it quite well. LinuxMCE is not the only game in town. You might also want to take a look at Elisa [http://elisa.fluendo.com/] which runs on Linux, MacOS X, and eventually will run on Windows. The aesthetics are far from pedestrian. As an aside, in my experience, people who speak ill of Linux have virtually no experience with it and/or have no idea what they are talking about.

[Xtopher Robin @ Aug 16th 2007 11:54PM]

Heh, funny enough, I just swapped out XP for Ubuntu a month ago (I had posted the question before that). It runs much smoother now. I'll be checking out LinuxMCE (I do still want to work this thing as a media center), but now the hurdle is remote control. I really appreciate all the help, and I thanks for posting my question Engadget!

And yes, I've used Front Row; my fiance has a PowerBook G4, but I don't get to play with that much. LOL

[None More Negative @ Aug 17th 2007 12:09AM]

Regarding a remote, one option is to use an IR dongle, supported by LIRC [http://lirc.org]. You might also consider a small RF keyboard [http://www.adesso.com/products_detail.asp?productid=281]. If you are wanting to extend the capabilities of your media center to include more computer-centric functionality, and keyboard is a good idea.

[Dean Marano @ Aug 16th 2007 11:55PM]

GB-PVR. I use it for TV recording, but its still a slick interface even if you don't use it

[ansformer @ Aug 17th 2007 12:08AM]

Looks fine but with 64MB Radeon on a lappy, I can almost guess what you have under the hood - Mobility Radeon 7500C.

It was "ok" back in the day. Fact is, the 7500C has known problems exporting video to an external monitor. To be honest, it's a bit below the average. If you upgrade the graphics card and sell the one you have, you'll have a decent media center.

[Xtopher Robin @ Aug 17th 2007 12:18AM]

Actually, it's crappier than that; it's a Radeon 320M. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either. lol How does one change out the video card in a laptop anyway?

[david.daugherty @ Aug 17th 2007 1:08AM]

I second the vote for BeyondTV. I've been a Snapstream/BeyondTV user for almost 4 years now. Greatest $50 I ever spent

[shea @ Aug 17th 2007 1:10AM]

I've been trying to do this for a few weeks now. tried the following:

Vista Ultimate with Media Center - much to slow for my hardware. (P4 1.7Ghz, 512MB)

MythTV - Only worth it if you enjoy troubleshooting linux.

XP MCE - Currently using. Decent, a lot of community add-ons. can add support for XVID etc,

I think I'm going to try gbpvr

[Cory @ Aug 17th 2007 1:22AM]

KnoppMyth? Seriously it's not that hard!

[NewJohnny @ Aug 17th 2007 1:36AM]

I use J River Media Center 12 for things like this. TV tuner, DVDs, and all the rest. http://www.jrmediacenter.com/

[josejuan05 @ Aug 17th 2007 1:40AM]

Not to be too obvious, but you could try to install MythTV. I've never had much luck with it (I just can't get those darn MySQL databases to work), but if you have the guts I'm sure you could get it to work. I'd suggest a flavor of linux that has an entire MythTV package compiled rather than building the whole shebang yourself (there's like 90+ different packages), but if it works it's pretty sweet!

[Craig Payne @ Aug 17th 2007 2:24AM]

SageTV would run FAST on this system. I'm a .NET programmer and it's written in Java, so you know it must be good. Just for comparison, I run SageTV 4.0 on a PIII 450Mhz with only 392MB of RAM. v6 requires a bit more juice, but barely.

[Mat @ Aug 17th 2007 9:15AM]

You all have to try Mediaportal www.team-mediaportal.com
Its all open source and has been evolving rapidly since its birth a couple years ago. Its the poodles privates :)

M

[Mike S @ Aug 17th 2007 7:45AM]

I go with Jerry K with GBPVR
Sub has just released a new version that is oh so sweet on looks. Check it out www.gbpvr.com
You can add or remove modules so if you find your PC cant cope or you just don't want parts of it you can just untick the box and it wont run that module. Nice and easy to set up as well.

[leo_dk @ Aug 17th 2007 7:57AM]

I'm running Meedio on an old Pentium M 1,8GHz with intel 845 gfx. Works flawlessly up to (and somewhat beyond) 720p encoded xvid.
Meedio has the best backend database - and with all the plugins almost everything is possible.
Steep learning curve, somewhat old (discontinued dev.) - but free and there is a new group making meedios, based on same principles but up to date program (www.meedios.com).

[joe @ Aug 17th 2007 9:32AM]

GB-PVR
It's free and has a great UI. It also has many plug-ins to customize it and add functionality.

[elduran @ Aug 17th 2007 9:36AM]

I have a Dell inspiron Celeron 2.4 Ghz 512 ram with XPMCE, with the Dell angel USB video card for TV input, connected to my Vizio LCD 32" via VGA, external USB Sata HD 250 Mb full of Divx movies, and runs fine, can wath internet tv channels via my webmedia plugins, tv, and movies and sometimes browse the internet while watch tv, and never crash

[Ma2T @ Aug 17th 2007 9:59AM]

I have a laptop which I have Windows MCE on, it's a AMD 3000+ with Radeon mobility 700 128mb gfx, 1280mb ram.

I have it connected upto my DIY HD 720p projector and use the MCE remote control and I love it, plays Divx / Xvid / DVDs, TV (via USB tuner) no problems what so ever.

I personally very much like MCE when used with the remote.

[adam @ Aug 17th 2007 10:12AM]

What media center programs can you run on a MAC?

[Xtopher Robin @ Aug 17th 2007 11:33AM]

Front Row is Apple's native program, though they don't support it's use outside of the systems they've installed it on. It's fairly easy to "hack" it in.

MediaCentral is another great program. My fiance has it on her PowerBook G4 (we got tired of automatic updates always disabling Front Row). It's not free, but it's got a lot of great features.

[Darren @ Aug 17th 2007 12:11PM]

If you've got a Radeon IGP320, depending on your RAM and BIOS version, you can get up to 128 mb VRAM. I've got a laptop with pretty much the same specs and haven't tried HD on it yet, but in case you fall short on VRAM, you might want to try fiddling with the amount of VRAM assigned by the BIOS. I was also looking forward to use it as a media center!

[Dk @ Aug 17th 2007 12:49PM]

I would stay away from Linux if you never dealt with it. Your specs are fine to run Windows XP MCE at 720p resolution.

If you want to be able to watch HD-DVD@1080p resolution you are better off getting a new one and use this one for NAS (Windows Home Server)

I specifically bought Acer Aspire 5920G (w/ HD-DVD) to use as a Vista Media Center and couldn't be hapier. They had special for $1,099@BestBuy last month. Laptop permanately seats below TV (46" 1080p Sharp) in enclosed space and I cannot hear a thing. With 8600GT 256MB it can also handle latest games.

[Foebea @ Aug 17th 2007 3:10PM]

oops, i think clarification is needed after rereading that. it downloads showtimes and details about movies along with thier trailers, it does not download the movies themselves.

[oompaloompa08 @ Aug 17th 2007 6:12PM]

I don't really think that a GUI really matters that much. LinuxMCE is great, it's free, it may not look so pleasing, but who really gives a crap? I'm not one of those people who pick looks over performance, obviously it seems like there are alot of people who do... This guy is just looking for some kind of management program to organize his music, pictures, and videos, nothing special. and since Windows DOES take more resources than linux, for his specs I think MCE is not the way to go, even though you can run it, it would be slower than LinuxMCE. I bet he's just tired of going through windows explorer to browse and pick individual things to open...

[Richard @ Aug 18th 2007 9:31AM]

look at www.jrmediacenter.com