The Chemistry of Engineering

In my last post regarding using a HTPC and fileserver for home entertainment, I was referring to Ubuntu Server Edition to use as operating system for the fileserver. Till that moment it seemed reasonable because a server edition was the best choice for a server.

However during installation a couple of annoyances came across. For example it does not come with a desktop environment. Since I am used to work on a desktop most of the time and do text based commands on a terminal window, I wanted some graphical eye candy in front of me. And because I normally rely heavily on the web to find out about problems, Firefox had to be available all the time.

So I decided to start using Ubuntu Desktop Edition. continue reading…

Last week I bought a Philips 42″ LCD TV. It is capable of showing Full HD content. Taken into account my ever growing collection of Full HD movies, and the growing use of Blue-Ray, we will be fully up to standards for the next years.

However my nature does not allow the purchace of a TV alone. There has to be more intelligence in such a step to be fully satisfactory. Therefore I planned to buy the components for a HTPC and fileserver along with the TV. Plans are to connect them together to get a full media network at home where every device shares its content with the others.

As always this turned out to be a quite ambitious plan, but it can be done. Others did it before me isn’t it?

continue reading…