Posts Tagged ‘installation’
Tip #14: Useful shortkeys to change video connection type
By default, the AV Wizard has the resolution 640×480 on VGA. This is not so good in case if your box is connected directly to TV. But there is a way to avoid connection VGA monitor to choose right connection. Just use following shorkeys: 1=DVI, 2=VGA, 3=Component, 4=Composite, 5=S-Video. To choose a resolution you have to press the keys from 6 to 0 – 6=640×480, 7=1024×768, 8=720p, 9=1080i, 0=1080p.
Note: for choosing the resolution and connector you have to be in the initial screen of AV Wizard!
Tip #7: Create a range of Cisco7970 MACs
To be able to add Cisco7970 IP Phones as plug-n-play devices in the LinuxMCE system you have to define a range of MAC addresses on the Cisco7970 device template. There is an utility to do that – /usr/pluto/bin/convert_mac.
MAC address is six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens (-) or colon (:). The first three groups identify a maker. You leave them and fill the rest by 0 and F. For example, if MAC is 00:16:78:CD:01:D8 its range will be 00:16:78:00:00:00 – 00:14:69:FF:FF:F. Now using convert_mac we can get correct data for the device template:
/usr/pluto/bin/convert_mac 00:16:78:00:00:00
/usr/pluto/bin/convert_mac 00:14:69:FF:FF:FF
Finally, put those values into text fields on the device template. Find more info and pictures here.
Tip #5: Using SPDIF
If your sound card has SPDIF output you can connect your media director to the receiver via coaxial or optical cables. But first you should activate SPDIF output because by default it’s muted. Run alsamixer utility, find IEC958 mixer and unmute it by pressing ‘m’. If you don’t do it first and try to configure sound using AVWizard your media director will freeze on the DTS sound test.
There is one trick with Plutohome 2.0.0.44. It has ALSA version 1.0.12 for the ordinary kernel and 1.0.11rc2 for SMP. So, my sound card built-in to the motherboard Asus M2N was recognized with ALSA 1.0.12 but with 1.0.11rc2 alsamixer showed analog output only. LinuxMCE uses modern Ubuntu packages. So, there is not any problems with SPDIF recognizing.
Tip #1: LinuxMCE Installation
As I already mentioned LinuxMCE should be installed on the top of the latest Kubuntu Feisty. So, there are actually two ways to do that. the first one is to install Kubuntu and after that install LinuxMCE.
Note: to avoid problems with LinuxMCE installation do not apply any updates on your Kubuntu installation! LinuxMCE should be installed on the fresh system!
The second was is a bit easier. You can download DVD with Kubuntu and LinuxMCE and install them at one step.
