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Entertainer: THE linux Media Center

entertainer-project.com — The best looking Media Center for Linux. It's still in development but Download it and help the process

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  • n8r0n, on 01/09/2008, -0/+23That UI is pretty slick...
    • MikeCerm, on 01/11/2008, -0/+1It looks exactly like Vista Media Center, except black. That's fine, because Vista's Media Center interface is great.
  • ArthurSucks, on 01/09/2008, -1/+17Hopefully it don't require 3D drivers like elisa does. (BTW elisa is also a great app)
    • the_blob, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1I used to think Elisa was great....but now it's *****, it doesn't load any of my media, or open folders with any of my media in them.
    • bsddork, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4Taken from Ubuntu Forums ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=610860 ).. ...

      Entertainer is a GTK-based media center application which uses Clutter library for beautiful OpenGL GUI. Multimedia is handeled with a great gstreamer backend. This combination provides support for large variety of codecs and eye-pleasing UI. Entertainer has seperated backend and frontend processes. Backend is responsible of indexing media, recording TV, updateing RSS feeds and stuff like that. Frontend is mainly just a GUI to media cache.
    • burrgrinder, on 01/09/2008, -0/+0Running 3D drivers isn't hard nowadays unless you've got a state of the art $800 graphics card. For a media center level graphics card, $30 and a local Wal-Mart can nearly guarantee a card that works.
    • Ashex, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Screenshots of Entertainer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9111235@N06/tags/ente ...
  • Philluminati, on 01/09/2008, -0/+15It's really nice to see a UML diagram in a piece of open source software.
  • onionizer, on 01/09/2008, -1/+5Me likes it!
  • DarkNemesis618, on 01/09/2008, -11/+333 Diggs and down already?
    • bejayel, on 01/09/2008, -3/+1OMGWTFBBQ only 1 digg and the site is down.
  • Lisztman, on 01/09/2008, -10/+334 diggs and the site is dead D:
  • manicallday, on 01/09/2008, -1/+6Google Cache:

    http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:ZGkRMTjfbX8J: ...
  • FatherG, on 01/09/2008, -0/+20Page is down, found this preview on youtube though
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh0QlWOddnQ

    Anyone have an alt download link? Sourceforge maybe?
  • Niubai, on 01/09/2008, -9/+1down after 36 diggs ?
  • foco2001, on 01/09/2008, -5/+1mirrors anyone?
  • timsline, on 01/09/2008, -6/+5A better web host would also help the process.
  • KineticShampoo, on 01/09/2008, -0/+3That looks incredibly sexy. I can't wait for it to come out. It looks somethign straight out of a movie.

    Anyone know if there will eb a color selection available?
    • yetAnotherCroc, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2It is skinable. So you can pretty much change all the UI elements to pixmaps of your choosing
  • conley, on 01/09/2008, -1/+23Looks like XBMC, which is currently my ultimate media center.
    • rh387, on 01/09/2008, -0/+3thats the first thing that came to my mind too
    • temsi, on 01/09/2008, -0/+5love xbmc, but the hardware limitations are a drag... can't really play any of my HD content.
      if someone makes an equivalent for the xbox360 or the ps3, I'm all over it.
      until then, I have to use a PC powerful enough to play 1080p .h264.
  • davidrools, on 01/09/2008, -6/+3site's down (maybe too many people downloading) but here's a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh0QlWOddnQ
  • bsddork, on 01/09/2008, -0/+10Found some screenshots on Flickr...
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/9111235@N06/
  • rediculous, on 01/09/2008, -5/+12kinda reminds me of GB-PVR

    problem with just about ANY Linux media center solution is the back breaking hours and hours of configuration and tweaking. Basically, media center in Linux is a hobby, not means to an end.
    • subliminalurge, on 01/09/2008, -6/+5Which is why I'm now running Vista Media Center after years of using Myth. While I prefer Myth, and there are features that I definitely miss, I just don't have the patience to spend two days tweaking the thing every time I do a version upgrade.
      • yetAnotherCroc, on 01/09/2008, -0/+7Well the goal for Entertainer is that it should basically be a matter of:
        1) Install
        2)Run
        3)Set media folders
        4)Enjoy your media
      • moghua, on 01/09/2008, -0/+3Weird, when I do an upgrade of MythTV, I type "svn update" then "make" and finally "make install". Then I restart the frontend and backend and the upgrade is done. Out of curiosity, what is the process to upgrade from one version of WMC to another?
        • TheNik, on 01/09/2008, -3/+31. Windows Update notifies you of updates to software, including Media Center
          2. Windows Update downloads the update and you click "Install"
          3. Computer Restarts, fin.
          • NTolerance, on 01/09/2008, -0/+151. Gnome update manager notifies you of updates to mythtv.
            2. Gnome update manager downloads the update after you click "install" and enter your root password
            3. Computer doesn't restart, fin.
        • geoken, on 02/09/2008, -0/+1Wierd, when I threw Vista on my brothers XP MCE box (he was extending to a 360 and wanted the nice, new UI) the proccess of upgrading from XP MCE to Vista MCE was a lot more complicated than what you just explained.
      • cawpin, on 01/09/2008, -0/+3Why would you have to re-tweak after an upgrade? It saves your settings automatically and you can back them up and manually restore them too.
    • mizike, on 01/09/2008, -9/+1"problem with Linux is the back breaking hours and hours of configuration and tweaking. Basically, Linux is a hobby, not means to an end."

      there, i fixed that up for you

      /i keed, i keed...
  • haryy, on 01/09/2008, -9/+2What a rip off of XBMC but I would use it once it gets TV implemented.
  • simmonsdd, on 01/09/2008, -5/+15New completely annoying *Audio* on ads for digg.com. It's just ***** rude. not to mention that only retards actually think they are getting two free ipod nanos.
    Sorry dudes, you need to cut that ***** out, or you'll be cut out of my rss feeds. regular ads OK, audio NOT.
    First warning.
    • bsddork, on 01/09/2008, -1/+13Step 1: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
      Step 2: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/186 ...
      Step 3: No more dumb audio ads!!!
    • simmonsdd, on 01/09/2008, -2/+4Thanks!
    • cawpin, on 01/09/2008, -1/+5Shouldn't have to do it!
      • burrgrinder, on 01/09/2008, -0/+5Don't know why you're dugg down. People shouldn't have to block ads because they're noisy.

        Sound producing ads are just rude and invasive, and probably cause the loss of more ad revenue than they gain, as they're the main thing that drives people to blocking ALL ads.
        • spectre_25gt, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1I know that's why I have flashblock. I let normal banner ads come through, because I feel that it's fair. When ads start playing all sorts of sounds and being completely distracting, that's over the line.
  • hadak, on 01/09/2008, -3/+1http://www.flickr.com/photos/9111235@N06/with/1906 ...
  • Infowarmachine, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2wow that looks extremely slick
    wish the site was up i really want to check that out
  • mizike, on 01/09/2008, -6/+1looks alot like the frontrow/appletv interface.....of course it's linux so it will work flawlessly for 1% of users, and the other 99% will spend hour upon hour trying to properly configure it....

    /non-sequitor
  • Orion682, on 01/09/2008, -1/+7Thank the gods, I hope they have a good development pace. I've resorted to using Windows MCE on my set-top boxes after trying MythTV, My Media System, MediaPortal, and an assortment of other MC applications. None of them were effective for my purposes, and so I've just setup WMCE and have been waiting for something like this to come along. Here's to hoping I can switch soon :)
  • kushed, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1Probably a dumb question, but I just finished installing Ubuntu on my PS3, will this run on it? Or any other recommendations for a media center?
    • mossblaser, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Its python, so long as all the libraries it uses will compile on PPC then it should work as expected!
      • craigyjack, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1PS3 isnt PPC, its uses the Cell processor. So yeah, if the libraries compile for the Cell processor.
      • steki, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Sorry but you are wrong :) (explanation follows...)
        PS3 has one PowerPC core and 8 SPE "engines" SPE="Synergistic Processing Elements" so basically you can use only this powerPC core for any purpose and this is exactly what Linux can run on.
        In the end we can say you are partially right :)

        P.S. Read about it here http://en.opensuse.org/PS3

  • Vimo, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Looks VERY nice. I'd love to try this one... but spending hours to find drivers and such kind of make me rethink it. I'd love to have this one set up on a computer to auto-load, like a distribution that only loads this app (and thus startup faster). Is that possible?
    • yetAnotherCroc, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2Its Linux! Anything is possible. Don't know the internal workings of Linux that well myself, but I imagine one could take something like Puppy Linux and strip it down to the bare essentials. As long as it has clutterUI and GTK
    • bejayel, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Of course it is possible.
  • asaturn, on 01/09/2008, -2/+5it doesn't play live TV from a tuner card yet.
    • pandorazboxx, on 01/09/2008, -2/+2I want that to happen! Are there plans for it to do that?
  • i88gerbils, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1How eerily convenient. My HTPC case came in today and I'm ready to start tonight ;-). However I have chosen Elisa, previously mentioned above, as the media center of choice. If that doesn't work out right (python blah) I'll probably customize fluxbox.

    I definitely like the RSS feeds and weather portion of Entertainer. It's something I haven't thought of yet.

    Site seems to be back up now especially if you access another page such as features.php.

    Also - https://launchpad.net/entertainer
  • christopher79, on 01/09/2008, -2/+1the graphic assets do look allot like the xbox media center
    hope the app is more stable than the website!
  • balazsbela, on 01/09/2008, -3/+10What about LinuxMCE?
  • Laterix, on 01/09/2008, -1/+38Heh, I'm the author of the Entertainer project. My website host contacted me and told me that my site is under ddos attack. It turned out that it was just Digg. :D Anyway, thanks for your interest in my project. It's still under heavy development, but I feel that it has some potential. Anyway, the site will be up after my host solves this small issue.

    PS. Someone was talking about display drivers. Yes, Entertainer requires drivers just like Elisa does, because it uses OpenGL to render the UI.
    • CCB0x45, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4What idiots are digging him down? Looks like a cool interface, ill keep using mythtv until something has the PVR features of that, but I really want a better music solution than mythtvs, mythtv's is absolutely terrible.
    • EnderTheThird, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2While I agree that the MythTV UI for handling Music is awful, when I thought about it there really isn't a great way to handle larger collections when you just have a d-pad and an OK button (main buttons on your remote), which is what most people will be using if they have an HTPC running. I'm definitely hoping someone can prove me wrong though. The Music UI in MythTV has always been a pain. :-/
      • rootneg2, on 01/10/2008, -0/+1There some interesting cursor based graphical text-input interfaces that might be conducive to a pad-style input.
        (i'm assuming your primary complaint is due to the lack of keyboard and freeform text input for search queries)

        dasher is the primary example i'm thinking of.
        http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
        it has a slight learning curve, but it's very fast once you get used to it. It uses a predictive system to let you "zoom in" to the next letter (or zoom out to backspace), more likely letters are larger; if it was able to pull the prediction data from your music tags, it could work very quickly with nothing more than directional input.
        • rootneg2, on 01/10/2008, -0/+1(sorry, missed the edit window)

          i realize that this isn't implemented yet is *any* media center; i'm simply suggesting it as a possible solution. I certainly would like to see it integrated into something like MythTV or Entertainer.
    • Theli, on 01/09/2008, -0/+5It's nice to see some new Linux based media centers be made available.
      Thank you.
  • Paintmekev, on 01/09/2008, -2/+0this uses the same sources for the XBMC linux project. XBMC is based off python.....this project is still in the works but when it is done. it willbe one of the best out there.
    here is the linux iso
    http://linuxtracker.org/torrents-details.php?id=42 ...
    • codelogic, on 01/09/2008, -0/+3XBMC is not based on Python, it is written in C++. XBMC however supports Python scripts that can run from inside it.
  • nape, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1will this play x264?
    • Laterix, on 01/09/2008, -0/+4Yes. It uses gstreamer as multimedia backed. This means that it playes all video that gstreamer supports.
      • nape, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1thanks for the reply, i should probably switch to this from windows mce, cuz i hate it.
        • yetAnotherCroc, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Don't expect full functionality yet. It does play videos and stuff. But is is still really buggy in some ways and is lacking a lot of functionality. On the other hand it doesn't even have a version number yet:P Its only on its 6th code revision.
    • bejayel, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1I would say as long as the codec exists, you should be able to...
  • amoore260, on 01/09/2008, -0/+1Makes some debs the source files using brz don't work for me. Any chance this will be in the repos for 8.04?
    • Laterix, on 01/09/2008, -0/+7There is no release yet, so there are no packages. I won't make release before I feel that it's usable for real use. At the moment it's not ready for every day use. I will create a deb packages when it's ready for that. Well, I can't promise that it gets ready before 8.04 is out. Unfortunately I'm very busy at work and I have to do long days. That's not good for development speed. Luckily few people have contacted me and they are willing to help me with this!
      • amoore260, on 01/11/2008, -0/+1Good luck on this project I look forward to giving a full test run when its a little more mature.
  • maximm, on 01/09/2008, -1/+2yeah hopefully it doesn't just arbitrarily wipe your hard drive like LinuxMCE. You would figure clicking to the install wouldn't just immediately wipe your drives and repartition them. I had expected disk druid or something.
  • InorganicMatter, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1Hmm, where have I seen that before? Surely it doesn't look at all like Windows Media Center, or MyMovies2...
  • mahenda, on 01/09/2008, -0/+0It reminds me of FrontRow on MacOSX, well and that is a good thing ... finally!! :)
  • noisymime, on 01/09/2008, -0/+2There's a similar piece of work going on to create an alternative Mythtv frontend using the same Clutter framework: http://code.google.com/p/gloss-mc/
  • therosiandoom, on 01/09/2008, -1/+1Call me back when it can actually record from TV.
  • lynx44, on 01/09/2008, -1/+3I don't get why we keep getting these new media center applications for Linux. Its good to have some competetion I suppose, but MythTV is already pretty mature, why wouldn't these developers put their effort toward that application? I totally agree that it needs some updates, but updating Myth would certainly take less time than rewriting an entirely new application. Just doesn't make sense to me.
    • ChuqAU, on 01/10/2008, -2/+3I agree.. now we have
      1) MythTV
      variations like
      1.a) MythBuntu
      1.b) MythDora
      2) LinuxMCE
      3) XBMC for Linux
      4) Entertainer

      Its great to have all these options, but it would be nice to have ONE app that is 100% than several which are in beta versions.
  • chingy1788, on 01/10/2008, -0/+1early versions gave me a headache
    spent 3 days getting it all setup
    then it didn't work
    it was crazy german UT kid for the next day
    then just went back to XP
  • Blackforge, on 01/10/2008, -0/+0Kind of looks like a cross between Windows Media Center and TVersity.

    But this (from screenshots link on launchpad project site):
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/9111235@N06/154322526 ...

    Looks like a slightly modified screenshot of the Music Library portion of Media Center. Don't know if this is a mockup or not. Definitely looks just like it though ;)
  • thelastknowngod, on 01/10/2008, -1/+2looks like front row... i dont really like it.

    nothing compares to LinuxMCE.
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2176025602 ...
  • jorno, on 01/10/2008, -1/+0lynx44: Well, MythTV (as far as I have read at least) is primary for recording and watching recorded TV-shows. Different Media Center Solutions - different goals.

    I have tried lots of media center solutions. MCE is OK, but not optimal for my use. MythTV is directed at recording and watching recorded TV-shows - but I have no TV-card in my computer, so that's not for me. LinuxMCE is incredible, but covers "too much" for my needs. Team MediaPortal is so far the solution I have chosen, much because of the nice plug-in "MP-TVSeries" which does what I need - displays all my downloaded TV-episodes/series in a pretty way, helping me keep track of which I've already seen and displays nice information.

    BUT, I would love for a solution which runs under Linux (Team MediaPortal is for Windows). And Entertainer looks very much like what I want, need and desire! So I'm looking forward to give it a spin!

    IMHO, it's good to find different approaches to different needs. Yes, I know there are many Media Center Solutions out there - but why not? Why should we limit our options?
    Have you ever taken a look at all the different MP3-players out there? WinAMP, iTunes, Windows Media Player, beep, XMMS.... The list goes on forever... And yes, there are both good and less good players out there. But why not have the possibility to choose which one works best for you?

    I, for one, can't wait to try out Entertainer!!
    • lynx44, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0Yeah, that is its primary use, however it has a section for videos, music, games, etc. Its supposed to be the all-in-one solution. I agree that its nice to have options, it just seems like we keep getting these beta versions that may or may not make it very far. Myth has a plug-in architecture, so I don't see why it couldn't be adapted to just about any solution. The menus can all be configured too. I'd rather see a reskinned and reorganized version of myth than a whole new media solution, just because it should be able to be done in a matter of weeks or months, rather than years. Anyway, maybe these applications will do it better, like I said there should be competition, I just feel like I've been seeing a new media center application for Linux on the front page of Digg all to often, and I just feel like they're reinventing the wheel.
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