Ubuntu TV Finally Gets a Close-Up 146
Barence writes "Canonical has unveiled the first screenshots and details of Ubuntu TV. Plans for versions of the Linux distro for tablets, smartphones and TVs were unveiled last year, and now the television is — perhaps surprisingly — the first of those to arrive. 'It's a simple viewing experience for online video, both your own and routed over the internet,' Jane Silber, Canonical's CEO told PC Pro. Movie streaming services will be supported as well as live television broadcasts. Ubuntu TV will be integrated into television sets, but Canonical was unable to confirm any manufacturers. It will be released later this year."
Mythbuntu (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking at the screenshots, it looks like it's running MythTV with a custom theme
I wonder how the Mythbuntu folks feel about this.
Seeing as this Ubuntu respin has never been officially endorsed by Canonical (to my knowledge), may be seen as a bit of a hijacking of the project...
I wonder what they use for dlna and daap (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully there may be some new packages coming out because of this
daap seems broken on ubuntu
least ways I can't connect via daap to my media on my nas , that may be due to a bad file name for a media file. Tried several media players and failed each time.
DLNA does work with Totem and XBMC but Totem doesn't filter and XBMC takes over the whole session meaning you can't just set music playing and get on and do something else.
rhythmbox is supposed to support DLNA but the media servers don't show up.
The other issue which exists is DRM somehow there has to be some decoding of drm in order to use a lot of feeds and what content provider is going to give keys to decode content without some certainty that their content isn't going to become part of somebodies library for the price of a rental
Re:But WHO will manufacture them? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you're kind of missing the point. It's up to manufacturers to pick what OS their TV runs (and yes, it feels seriously odd saying that). All digital TVs and PVRs run Linux, almost without exception - there are some weird outliers like cable boxes that run VxWorks, but they're going away.
If I can get my hands on a feature-complete environment with a pretty solid company behind it to install onto my TV, I'd be mad not to use it in favour of some half-assed homegrown thing.
Re:I wonder what they use for dlna and daap (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a serious lack of UPNP renderers on Linux. I'm kind of surprised at this, since it shouldn't be hard to do. I'll throw it on the pile with my other 327 projects.
They need to take a page or two from MythTV (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used MythTV extensively in the past, not as much anymore since cable providers fight tooth and nail against clear QAM and NTSC, but never mind that.
One thing I really liked about MythTV was the ability to launch any program I wanted through use of the "Game Player" section - most notably, I actually liked being able to launch actual video games. If this thing actually hits TV's or a set top box the box itself needs to support Bluetooth - for pairing PS3 controls. USB would be an alright work around and there's lots you could do with it, but really Bluetooth is the way to go. They need the MythTV like game launch for ZSNES, Mednafen, MAME, and whatever else. The console in the TV would be the rockinest thing ever!
(Building in support for a Myth backend would be nice also, but who am I fooling? Cable providers have put a bullet in that. It's easier to just torrent and watch shows than it is to time shift - the irony of the situation - fighting against the peoples ability to legally do as they should be able to causes more piracy - who would have guessed?)