Steam-ish machine

Steam Machines' future is reported to be in peril as a result of delayed releases and Windows 10/Valve announcements (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2877281/why-the-steam-machine-revolution-may-fizzle-out-before-it-even-starts.html). However, my Steam(-ish) machine is here right now, and here's a report.

A quick recap: my linux (Ubuntu-based distro) HTPC sits in my lounge in ye-olde case (13 year old, Evesham X case), next to the television. I chose components to get a good balance between performance, low noise and low-power usage. The CPU is an AMD FX-8300 and GPU is an Nvidia GTX-650. This means the system can run games such as The Witcher 2, and Metro Last Light at medium/high settings, yet can be left running 24/7 without high power usage and too much noise (HDD soon to be replaced by SDD, and GPU fan to be replaced, which should reduce noise to practically inaudible).

Steam for Linux is installed on this PC, and runs absolutely fine in Desktop mode. However, Big Picture Mode frequently crashes, usually when viewing video, so I rarely go into Big Picture Mode, which is a problem, as Desktop mode is so hard to read on my television from about 8ft away. This is a real shame as Big Picture mode's layout is very good as part of a living room PC. Big Picture Mode also seems to be very resource-hungry, even after lauching a game; so much so, that when launching Metro or The Witcher 2 from BPM, the frame rate is so low the game is unplayable. Switching to Desktop mode and launching those same games resolves the issue.

I use an Xbox 360 wired gamepad to play most games now. Any games that require mouse and keyboard, particularly FPS, range from virtually impossible to slightly clunky with a Logitech K400 keyboard, as it has a trackpad, and a small one at that. Fortunately, most WASD games I've seen being released on Steam these days, support gamepads.

So what is the experience like compared to dedicated gaming consoles? Well, I'm sorry to say, that whilst I get on well enough with Steam Desktop version (as long as I sit close enough to read text!), Big Picture Mode just doesn't feel as sound as I'd like it to be. Admittedly, my machine is configured to do a lot more than just run Steam, but when I trim down running processes to test Steam I still come across the same issues; the main ones being Big Picture Mode crashing, and its resource-hogging. Once these are resolved, I would be quite happy to boot into Steam BPM by default.

The range of games is on Steam for Linux is growing larger and larger all the time - Steam is now listing 939. With recent major titles such as Metro, Dying Light, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Football Manager, Sid Meier's Civilization series, and The Talos Principle, to name a few, the quality is getting better too. Hopefully this year will see more and more AAA titles being released on Steam for Linux, as this will surely prompt Valve to iron out those bugs on Big Picture Mode sooner rather than later.

BBC iPlayer add-on for Kodi, and Channel 4's 4oD

After being stopped by BBC several months ago, I've just noticed that the BBC iPlayer add-on for Kodi is working again. I can now watch live BBC TV and access all iPlayer's catch-up recordings via this add-on.

This is good news as I no longer have to access it via browser - the Kodi addon works so well and is far easier to navigate and find programmes than BBC's own iPlayer web site.

If only Channel 4 would allow such third party access to their 4oD service, too. I appreciate it is available on Windows PCs, iOS, Android, some games consoles, Smart TVs and set top boxes, but Channel 4's use of DRM restricts access to viewing via one of these devices. So, my only way of accessing 4oD is via Android - not a great viewing experience! Come on Channel 4, please open up http://m.channel4.com/4od/ once again so that third party 4oD apps can work again. I've tweeted Channel 4 with this request and on the form at http://www.channel4.com/4viewers/contact-us. You could do the same if this matters to you, too.

Kodi and UK Freeview TV

OK - so after a few months of not attempting to fix/get around some roadblocks in terms of streaming live TV to XBMC frontends, and no sound on HD channels, I decided to revisit my nearly complete HTPC for one last stab.

And, hey presto, I've made good progress and I'm really pleased with the setup as it stands - still some tweaks I intend to make, but I have a funny feeling I'll never be satisfied with the status quo.

So, I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.1, Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), MythTV as a primary backend server, UK Freeview DVB-T2 being tuned by TBS6285.

The rest of the kit can be seen in my previous posts.

I managed to resolve the HD audio issue simply by going into Cmyth-PVR addonn settings in Kodi, and under advanced, deselecting the de-mux option. I'm sure I tried this several months ago, to no avail, but it seems to have done the trick this time. So, now I can hear TV audio on all digital channels.

I'm able to stream to another PC in the house running Kodi as a frontend, simply by adding the CMyth-PVR addon. I couldn't achieve this using a Rasperry Pi with Openelec - for some reason that version of Cmyth just wouldn't allow primary backend and Rapsberry Pi to talk to each other.

All in all, I am really impressed. Live TV channel changing in Kodi seems to be quicker than when I last tried with XBMC in summer, and whilst not what I would called instant, it is acceptable - probably 2 - 3 seconds for the new channel to buffer and then play.

The picture quality is excellent, in HD. I did have to play around with a few variations of settings in Kodi's hardware acceleration settings section and in the onscreen display video settings section. I finally settled on auto interlacing, auto interlacing method, and auto video scaling. The quality and frame rate is excellent.

I also spent some time re-ordering channels on the mythbackend. I did this by opening a terminal and typing mythtv-setup. In the options menu that appears, select Channel Editor, and then work through the channels amending as you see fit. I've removed all the shopping channels, dating channels and all SD channels that have an HD alternative, and moved them into my preferred order. After this, mythbackend needs to be restarted, then open Kodi LiveTV settings and ensure "Always use the channel order from the backend/s".

I'm using a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard to control the HTPC and somtimes theYatse android app to control Kodi, This sounds complex, but it works really well. e.g. keyboard is on other side of living room, no problem - you can still control Kodi without the massive effort of rising from your chair and walking 3 steps across a lounge!

Silverstone Grandia GD09 - HTPC case

I really like the look of this Silverstone Grandia GD09 HTPC case. I was concerned that the GD07 and GD08, which were previously prime candidates to sit underneath my telly, would be too deep for cables, USB dongles etc to comfortably stick out the back of the case.

This case, the GD09, is shallower. The dimensions are 440mm (W) x 170mm (H) x 358mm (D). This makes it a similar size to other HTPC cases, but this has the advantage of being able to fit an ATX motherboard, whereas others of similar dimensions restrict you to mATX boards.

The price is very reasonable too, especially for a Silverstone case. Prices are around £50 currently, but it is hard to find in stock, so I suspect prices will rise soon.

The only issue is that, as with other HTPC cases, the height of the case restricts you to a CPU cooler height of 138mm. So, my Scythe Mugen IV will have to be chopped in for something a little smaller, but equally as quiet and efficient, like the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 or Noctua NH-L12.

Silencing kit for Silverstone Grandia HTPC case

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=121359887181&alt=web

Cheap XBMC remote control

The Telegraph: KAZAM releases phones for under £40. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIww7b1nB8

The Trooper X 3.5 retailing at £39.95 could make an ideal XBMC remote control once Yatse is installed. Especially if it could be placed on a charging dock overnight.

TBS6285 Part 2

Following on from my previous post http://ubuntulinuxhtpc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/tbs6285.html I've received the quad-tuner and installed it, having overcome a few hurdles. I've described the process I followed, below. If you can't get this card to work, feel free to get in touch, and I should be able to help you get up and running.

The first hurdle to overcome was installation of the linux drivers for the TBS6285. These can be downloaded from http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/. After help from Constantine, developer at Turbosight (TBS), it turned out that my motherboard (MSI 990FXA-GD65) is one of many faulty ones floating around (there is a buggy ASM1083 chip soldered between PCIe and PCI bus) which cannot handle IRQ from the card and causes an interrupt storm from the card. To overcome that I did the following (from http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=7631#p24903):

1. Create a .conf file 

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/tbs.conf

2. Edit contents of .conf file by inserting the following two lines and saving file

options saa716x_tbs-dvb int_type=1

options saa716x_tbs-dvb enable_ir=0 

The first line activates MSI (Message Signal Interrupts) instead of the older IRQ. The second disables remote control receiver on the card to make sure the interrupt storm is not coming from there).

3. Reboot to load the driver with MSI loaded.

Then, following intructions from http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work and http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6284 with a few amendments for TBS6285 and some permissions problems, I managed to get the card working. These are the commands I used:

1. Extract the ZIP file tbs-linux-drivers_v[VERSION NUMBER].zip. As of 25 April 2014, the latest version is 140425.

unp -u tbs-linux-drivers_v140425.zip

2. Extract linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2 archive

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

unp linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2

3. Change ownership and permissions of extracted files

sudo chown -R <yourusername> tbs-linux-drivers_v140425

sudo chmod -R 777 tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

4. Change to driver package directory

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425

cd linux-tbs-drivers

4.1 (If on fresh install on CentOS or similar)     

yum install kernel-devel-`uname -r`

cd linux-tbs-drivers

make clean

make distclean

 (move to Step 5)

  
5. Select platform architecture
(for any x86_64 kernel only)

enter into a terminal: 

./v4l/tbs-dvbc-x86_64.sh

and then:

./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh

6. Build the driver. Recompiles v4l for a wide range of cards, around 500, will take many minutes.

make

        (I modify this to make -j7  to use all 6 cores of my CPU)

7. Install driver

sudo make install

8. Reboot, then
(Ubuntu-based distros only. See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work for other distros)

sudo rm -Rf /lib/modules/<your kernel version>/kernel/drivers/media

9. Reinstall drivers

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

cd linux-tbs-drivers 

sudo make install

10. Load newly installed driver

sudo modprobe -v tbs62x0fe

insmod /lib/modules/3.(your kernel version)-generic/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/frontends/tbs62x0fe.ko

11. Check it loaded correctly

Reboot:

sudo shutdown -r now

After rebooting and logging back in, check to see if dvb adaptor nodes now exist:

ls -al /dev/dvb

You should see something similar to the following displayed in your terminal:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter0

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter1

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter2

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter3

This should give you a correctly installed TBS6285 on Ubuntu 14.04 (after trials and tribulations, it did for me!)