The “Tech Support” column is usually all about work: system administration, optimization, security, and so on. But it’s summer, time to sit back, relax and have some fun — like building a Linux media center for your home.
One approach is a UPnP media server. The UPnP architecture offers pervasive and seamless peer-to-peer connectivity of intelligent appliances, wireless devices, and PCs of all form factors within a certain proximity. Based on TCP/IP and the Web, UPnP is media-, device-, and platform-independent, so any client can connect to any server. (More information is available at http://www.upnp.org.) This is a refreshing change, as many “media center”-like implementations leave Linux out in the cold.
Here, let’s use Linux as the operating system and MediaTomb as the UPnP server. MediaTomb is open source and sports a Web-based user interface. It allows you to stream digital media through your home network and listen to or watch it on a variety of UPnP compatible devices. For example, a Nokia N800 with the Canola media player (http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/) was used to test the configuration; many NAS devices, media devices, home A/V receivers, game consoles and more now support UPnP.
The easiest way to install MediaTomb is to use one of the provided binaries. Pre-built packages are available for Ubuntu (via apt), Fedora (via yum), FreeBSD, and OS X. If you aren’t running a supported distribution or simply prefer to compile your applications, the full…
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