The MisterHouse Media How-to
    version 0.10 David Vitrant and Pete Flaherty

    This is a short description of how to get the Media application up and
    running with your MisterHouse system.

    This document was originally written by David Vitrant, who inspired me
    to write the module in the first place. He was instrumental in the
    debugging and documentation. For the most part this is his how-to,
    though I have added some additional commentary about using the module
    with a remote xine player and store.

  What's not covered:
      Setting up a remote media repository, on a machine (that is not the
      MisterHouse server) that will be running your xine media player (this
      will be covered in a future revision as details become available)

  Recommendations:
      This is a general guide and your mileage will vary...

      PLEASE NOTE THESE ARE BARE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

      For a local (MisterHouse server) installation, you will need at least
      a 1GHz processor For a Remote installation you will need a t least a
      700MHz processor

      For Either installaton

      * Memory: 256M minimum More is recommended (depending on your other
      system demands)
      * A capable supported graphics card with TV out (if you want to
      rebroadcast).  
               This has been tested with nVidea and ATI Radeon cards.

      Notes: Processor, Memory and Graphics are very important, as video
      processing is highly resource intensive, Lack of reasonable power in
      any of these areas will directly affect the quality of your video
      playback... again your mileage will vary

  Introduction:
      mhmedia_xine is a module for MisterHouse that lets you control Xine
      from your MisterHouse web page. It will let you play, stop, toggle
      full screen, load playlists, as well as most of the amenities that
      come with xine.

      mhmedia is the database, and collection tool to help you organize your
      media, and playlists (as of this writing this module is not
      completed).

  Installing:
      First you need to have MisterHouse installed (download from
      misterhouse.net)

      Then download the mhmedia file from: (mhmedia_xine.pl should come with
      version 2.98 of misterhouse and above)

      On linux type “tar xvfz mhmedia.tar.gz” should unpack the file and
      u should now have a folder.
      - look in the folder and you will have two folders common and web.
      - the file in common should go in your common directory, mine is in
      /usr/share/misterhouse/code/common
      - move the stuff in the web -> ia5 folder into the entertain directory
      of your misterhouse (usually under web) mine is in :
      /usr/share/misterhouse/web/ia5/entertain and images in that image
      folders
      - the media folder should go right in your local web folder mine is in
      /usr/share/misterhouse/web/media/

  Xine Settings:
      Xine needs to have a passwd file to allow users to access it from the
      network. Traditionally this is in /home/you/.xine/ and mine is just
      called passwd.  This file (passwd) contains only this one line
      “ALL:ALLOW” which allows all your uses to access it. You also want
      in your .xine a playlist.tox file.. call it whatever.. and put
      whatever playlist you want.. from xine. This playlist will be called
      up when you start xine from your MisterHouse system.

      Now start Xine from command line in the network mode.. do this by
      typing at a prompt “xine -n” ( this may be on your local MH
      machine or on a remote machine, that will be serving your media )

      NOTE: START XINE FROM THE USER THAT WILL BE ACCESSING THE DATA FROM
      MH.

  MH Settings:
      Now open a browser and go to your localhost:8080 (or whatever
      port/url) login as admin and click on MH Home -> MH Setup ->common
      code activation.

      Make sure that mhmedia_xine.pl has a check mark on the left side (is
      activated) and also click on the EDIT config parms.

      The important settings are:

      * media_server_playlist=/root/.xine/playlist.tox
      * media_server_host_port=localhost:6789
      * media_server_user=
      * media_server_pass=
      * mhmedia_program=

         the playlist is set to whatever user will be running xine's
         playlist.. in my case it's in my root directory. The host_port
         tells you what port you will be using (default is 6789) and i added
         localhost or you can put your ip that worked for me This parameter
         is in the host:port format, where the host may be either a DNS name
         (if you run local DNS) or an IP followed by the port (eg
         media_server_host_port=192.168.1.1:6789 )

      I left the rest blank (but it depends on the passwd file you made for
      user/passwd ) the passwd file in your .xine directory.

      As a side note (after you have your setup working) you may want to
      assign a specific user and password for accessing xine,  For example
      setting misterhouse:media in the xine passwd file and setting the
      media_server_user and media_server_pass, would limit access to only
      MisterHouse for remote controlling the xine player.

      mhmedia_server is currently not implimented and does not need to be
      set, though this setting will be needed to launch xine from within
      MisterHouse (in the future).

      If all goes well and Xine is on you can now go to localhost:8080 ->tv/
      radio mp3/player and you should be able to get to a Media Center
      button right bellow the jukebox button.

      If you have elected to run xine on a remote box, access should be
      similar, simply access your MisterHouse machine as described above.

      click on that and enjoy. Check to see if you have a connection to xine
      by clicking check.. and then on to control.. then enjoy the fun.

