Enna Media Center

By now there's a few really good media center application available for Linux, and today yet another joins the game. The very first release of Enna Media Center (v0.4.0) has came out!

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Benjamin Zores, the project leader for the GeeXbox project and long-time MPlayer developer, has announced the first public (beta) release of Enna. Enna is a multi-media player that will be at the heart of the GeeXbox 2.0 distribution and is available as a separate program for those using other Linux distributions.

This project is still very very young and still lacks many features compared to something like XBMC, but Enna is said to be much smaller in terms of size, dependencies and resources consumption. Although we have XBMC, Moovida and LinuxMCE, it's always nice to see a new competitor on the block.

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Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic users can have a quick try at it, through apt-get, the whole stuff having been packaged for. Just add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://packages.geexbox.org/ karmic main

Once done, you may just install Enna through the following command:

aptitude update
aptitude install enna

More information about Enna can be found in this blog post.

Source:
- http://gxben.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/first-public-enna-0-4-0-release/
- http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nzg1NA
- http://enna.geexbox.org/index.html

XBMC 9.11: Alpha1 ready for testing

The first official testing release of the beloved XBMC 9.11 is now available.

The official announcment writes:

Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release. Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them.
We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.

There are a lot of new features in this release, far too many to list here, but the highlights are:

• DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
• Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
• Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
• Switch to Core Audio on OSX
• Many VDPAU improvements under linux
• Many platform-specific customizations
• Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.

Download

If you like living on the edge and would like to try the alpha, head over to our download page. You will always find the most current official builds there. AppleTV users may update via launcher’s downloads.

The Ubuntu SVN PPA build and XBMC Live will be uploaded soon!

Source: http://xbmc.org/team-xbmc/2009/11/04/xbmc-9-11-alpha1-ready-for-testing/

Moovida

Earlier I wrote about Elisa, the Media Center application that later was renamed Moovida.

If you want to give Moovida a try, Ubuntugeek.com has recently posted an article with a installation guide (using the PPA) for this free media player that plays all your files – AVI,mp3,MKV,DivX,MOV,MP4.

Source: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/moovida-free-media-player-play-all-your-files-avimp3mkvdivxmovmp4.html

No More Elisa

Today I wanted to visit the elisa.fluendo.com and I was very suprised to discover that I was being redirected to www.moovida.com

The big news is that Moovida 1.0 has been released. Moovida is what used to be called Elisa, with more coolness in it. There's a new interface which is suppose to be super slick (haven't tried it yet).

Did you know? I didn't!

Check it out here: http://www.moovida.com/

Elisa Media Center Appliance

James Willcox has created a media center appliance with SUSE Studio to see how hard it would be. The appliance is based on openSUSE 11.1, and boots right into the excellent Elisa Media Center. You can download the image here. The tarball contains one file, which you can ‘dd’ to a USB storage device. On the first boot it will do some one-time setup like repartition and resize the disk, install NVIDIA or ATI video drivers (if appropriate), and setup X. Essentially SUSE Studio is a web interface which allows you to build your own customized version of SUSE. You can select packages, do some configuration, and even add your own branding.

What can you do with SUSE Studio?

* Create a tuned server appliance, containing your application and just enough operating system components
* Spin a live CD or DVD with just the packages and software you need
* Create a ready-to-run VMware virtual appliance
* Create a live USB key and carry your Linux system with you wherever you go
* Build a hard disk image for preloading onto hardware
* Install from your live CD, DVD or USB key to your hard drive

Download Elisa Media Center Appliance


Source: http://snorp.net/