Episode: 2726
Title: HPR2726: Home Theater - Part 2 Software (High Level)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2726/hpr2726.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 15:44:41

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This in HP are episode 2007-126 entitled Home Theater Part 2 Software High Level.
It is hosted by Operator and in about 21 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, I go over a high level of my notes for the software on my MediaBox and
it relates to TV slash move in slash music.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Anastos.com.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Hacker Public Radio and your host Operator.
This is going to be Part 2 of the series building your own media center box deal.
It's going to go over software.
I went over the hardware portion and I'll work on the tags once I get the whole series up.
But this is going to be a higher level overview of the software portion of how to kind of
build your media center.
The hardware port I've done already and this will be a high level of the software.
The good news is the software portion I have completely documented from start to end
as far as installation media and all that.
So I'm going to briefly go over that breeze over pages and pages and pages of setup and
then I will eventually come back to areas that need more focus on usage and how to utilize
those applications.
So first thing I've got here is setup USB boot.
It used to be, there was a couple of other options but looks like everybody's using
Rufus, R-U-F-U-S to create boot media in Windows at least.
So what I did was got Rufus and downloaded the live image of Debian.
You don't need the full install and install proper normal way you're going to install.
The trick here is if you have newer biosis and you can't set the legacy mode, try to set
the legacy mode so everything just kind of works.
You don't have to worry about U-A-F-I stuff, turn all that stuff off unless you need it
for a particular reason.
But make it a legacy boot just to save yourself mental English, partitions move around and things
move around.
And then also I have notes here for using partition based UUID and not the actual SDA whatever.
So for example, when your computer boots up it boots off of SDA too, normally.
Now what can happen in my environment at least?
The drive started moving around, it was U-E-F-I-S-U or the BIOS issue or whatever.
To get around this I had legacy mode and then I also implemented the part UUID option.
And I have notes in there and I'll go over that a little bit but basically it means get
the UID of the unique ID of the hard drive and mount that, not SDA too.
This will prevent any issues around, you know, medium boot, medium moving around, medium moving
around, swapping drives, it doesn't matter the order of the drive, it doesn't matter any
of that year because you're querying the system and saying, what's the UID of this, boot
it?
What's the UID of that, boot it?
So that got around my boot issues.
Here's some, also enabled some two NFS stuff around journaling, disabling journaling.
There's more other two NFS stuff that I did to, to, in theory, make the box faster.
I don't know whether or not those really do anything.
I added an NFS tab async, no A time.
I don't know if those necessarily do anything better or worse but from why I understand
it's supposed to be better.
That's in the notes about boot media.
For the window manager I used XFCE that I think comes default with Debian, a plain Debian
install.
The reason I didn't go with the Ubuntu is there's a lot of hate around the Ubuntu and there's
a lot of junk that gets installed with Ubuntu and even XFCE but we'll gloss over that.
But it's pretty light compared to any of the other distros out there.
When I have issues, going around Google Docs.
So when I have issues around stuff, it's hard to get any hits that aren't Ubuntu.
So I'll do how to get something up minus Ubuntu and then minus X Ubuntu.
So that way, if I'm searching around for issues, I don't get a bunch of specific stuff
for apps or apps package management stuff and specific to Ubuntu.
So it'll be more Debian specific instead of Ubuntu or X Ubuntu, whatever.
I'm going to list the base apps to install, G-Parted for partition stuff, IOTop to check
out what's going on with the hard drives and the usage of the hard drives, read, write,
speeds and all that.
Very crypt is a user encryption that's some different.
R-Sync I use for doing backups, things like that.
I might do a separate one on that.
So what happens is when you install the version of R-Sync, it doesn't have some of the features
that you would want to see.
So for example, copying a large amount of data like terabytes worth of data, the way
R-Sync works in a car line is going off great.
I do record in a car, I'm going to try to be better about my audio, but the noise level
should be not car level unless I'm doing some quick tips.
But anyways, sorry about that, the reason I use Compile R-Sync from Git is that if you're
copying large amounts of data, it will give you an actual better percentage of how it's
going to be complete overall instead of giving you the percentage of the next 10,000 files.
So if you're doing big copies and using R-Sync, you want to use the Git version of R-Sync
because it has some extra options called dash-info-something-to and that information is all in there.
So a log-in through FXFCE, so basically this is information on how to set up automatic
log-in so when the computer boots and logs in, there's some other stuff in here around
adding custom scripts that's not too hard to figure out, there's a lot of stuff on
start-up scripts and stuff like that, let's you log in to start something.
FSTab information, we already talked about that.
Cody is what I use, which is kind of an offset of, you know, Xbox Media Center that spun
into something else and now it's all Cody.
So some details I'll say around that is you want to set up understand inside of Cody.
So that way there's a lot of newer TVs will have overscan or underscan built into them.
You really want to do that through the operating system itself and overscan or underscan
whatever you want to call it is if you see stuff bleeding over or not fitting properly
to your TV or whatever you're sending that I'll put to, you'll have to mess with that
setting.
So there's auto scan or underscan, overscan stuff inside of Cody, you'll want to set
that up.
You'll want to set up the correct audio.
I haven't had a whole lot of problems with pulse using pulse so far.
I'll talk about audio compression in a second.
I'm about fourth of the way through, so I'm really kind of blazing over this, but I'm
about one fourth way through, so I think I'm good on time.
There's, I'll briefly go over the, about seven minutes and so, I'll briefly go over
the audio compression stuff.
So if you have issues like anybody else, if you're watching TV, some of the TV and some
of the movies have really big music scenes that are really loud and then quiet talking.
So everybody, whispers and whispers, whisper in a specific accent and you can't hear them.
It's very hard to understand, see if the turn of the audio and then when they go to the
action scenes, right, there's swords and fighting and screaming and music and it's all
very, very loud.
So there's some notes I have here on audio compression, which I just did recently and it's,
it makes a pretty big difference and sometimes it's not the desired effect because of the person
transcoded it.
However, they transcoded the audio, it, it, it seems to be hit or miss in some cases, but
in general, it's, it saves, save me some, an ear full of, of issues.
I also bound a negative 10 dB or 15 dB for the base inside of the receiver app that I
use to do that, and that's in the hardware set up, the YATC or whatever it's called, that
I control my media center or I control my receiver with an Android app and then you can
do custom commands inside of there and that's in the hardware portion, actually it's more
software, but I use that to control the receiver with a simple Android, a single Android device.
File management inside of Cody, you've got a clean library, you want to do those.
If you ever have issues with, with stuff being out of place and out of order, I think
it does automatically clean library, automatically and Cody, but you might have to do that.
Let's see, the load is what I use for, for torrent stuff, pretty simple, pretty straightforward,
installs web app based, I've been using that for a while, I used to use our torrent, but
now I switched to web based, the load, and it's easy for my, to use, sure I remember
now is it, it's easy for my wife to use and myself to use.
So in our, I use for TV, you know, I might do an episode on that.
So it's all not used for the TV part, that's the, that's the part that tracks what TV
episodes you'd like to watch and will automatically send those to your, your, your, your
using it application in my case as a BNCBD plus.
Let's see, the Plex part, I run Plex as a normal user on the system, not as root, I would
suggest to do that, also suggest kind of security through obscurity that you run the port,
on an alternative port.
So some big vulnerability comes out for Plex, you're not in that, that boat of people that
gets compromised.
So I manually update Plex, and it's pretty, pretty easy the way I've got the notes here.
You just download the dead file, I can actually automate this, but I don't want it to, to
knock over the database or break something when, when I do an update.
So I do updates manually and back up everything manually.
So I have a Plex user that I run everything through instead of, instead of root, subsonic
is what I use for audio, and I've got about a terabyte and some change words of audio
on there.
It's basically like a build your own iTunes.
You can share media, you can allow people to download multiple log-ins, TV.
I've got the description here for backing up subsonic and updating subsonic.
Some D-scripts may have done an episode of that, I'd have a LinkedIn post of how to
do system D, and it's pretty interesting and pretty creative or pretty strong or powerful
once you kind of understand and get over the fact that it's not an AD or whatever.
So there's some scripting in there.
So instead of having a service script that points to a script file, which is kind of how
most people are supposed to do it, I guess, I have a service file that just escapes a bunch
of parameters and runs my shell script straight inside of the exec start.
So you don't actually have to have a system service and the point and the script that
points to you.
You can do everything inside of the service file, which is probably not the way you're
supposed to do it, but that's how I have all my service files set up.
So if I need to do changes inside of a script, I don't have to edit two different things.
The system service, the service file, and whatever the actual script is.
I have some Nvidia notes here around Nvidia and Debian installing Nvidia drivers.
That was how you got the under scan to work and Nvidia and the camera to work.
So adjusting gamma, you don't want to do that.
Find one of those white balance videos to play or flight balance image, black and white.
It'll tell you how to adjust the white balance.
I like my stuff brighter than I do darker, a lot of movies and TV is darker than it should
be.
So I usually have my gamma, I actually have it set here in the settings here, I have my
gamma at 1.381, so in the under scan set to 32.
So that way something happens, or if I'm looking at some content and I can't see either
in the dungeon, then I can see what I need to see and not worry about missing details.
Here's some grub no splash, which I think I had some startup timing issues and I thought
maybe if I turn the grub to not splash, it'll start up a little bit faster.
General config stuff, update DB which is kind of locate database if you ever use the
locate feature, notes for that, here's some notes for hack lab, which is not relevant
to devian, some grub notes for the hack lab, zone minder notes, which is for my, that's
part of my media box setup, but it's not really relevant, and I've already done that episode
on zone minder in my object recognition stuff, so if you look under my episodes, you'll
see an episode for zone minder slash, CCTV slash, darknet stuff, yellow, pretty cool detectives
about dogs and cats and people in cars and posted email alerts and how about all that scripting
in here.
So there's a fair amount of notes in here that aren't relative to the actual media part,
but my server itself and how I have it set up, let's see, more zone minder stuff, more
zone minder stuff, board backups, I'll probably do a separate episode on this and I might
have some notes that I've done, actually I did one on spider oak, so I equipped it for
spider oak, so this just explains the board backup notes and the google docs just explains
how I do backups for my root partition, and I've noticed a number of times, you know,
if you backup the dot CONF files, the CONF files on your entire system, every time you boot,
they're small, they don't take a lot of space and you have an archive of every single comp
file in your entire system, and that will get you most of where you want to go now when
you screw up databases and you screw up other configuration files, that's not going to
help you, and that's where board backup comes into play and you can iteratively restore
certain files around the file system, and I've had some success with that where I've modified
something or really do something and said, oh, I completely screwed that up, I got a restore
from the old backup, I have here notes on google drive, which I don't use anymore, but
I kept them in there for other people, W and workstation notes, I have notes on here
about Wi-Fi, Lenovo on a Wi-Fi plug-ins for stuff, so that's more for workstation stuff,
that's pretty much it, so half of this is not relevant to the media box, the big pieces
are, you know, the boot issues I had, setting up Plex, setting up Sonar, setting up SAP
INCPD, which don't see any notes in here at all about SAP INCPD, which is kind of weird,
I think because I've got that down on lot, pretty good, so I might do a quick thing on
that one, but SAP INCPD is pretty straightforward, but the high level it is, software goes, is
you set up your using it service, you set up your indexers inside SAP INCPD, you set up
your indexers inside of Sonar, which will grab all your TV stuff, you set up plugins for
your browsers to, sorry, for the audio, you'll set up plugins for your browser to automatically
pipe stuff straight to SAP INCPD, so if you're clicking on an NCB file, it'll go, if you're
on the same network, obviously, it'll go straight dump to your automatically download
from your indexer, so you don't have to upload the NCB file, so the way it all works is
that there's, there's use net, and I should have started from the beginning with all this,
but there's use net, and use net has all the content, the TV, and all that stuff, then
there's, there's people that index use net, and there's multiple use net indexers out
there, they run for anywhere from, you know, $10 to $20 a year or so, and they will index
all of use net for you, and then you tell it what you want, and what kind of quality,
and all that, and Sonar will manage the TV quality within reason, and then it will point
to where to download those files instead of using it, so instead of having to go to the
indexer, or to go to the use net group, and find the files yourself, these indexers will
index it, and then mark them as bad or good and different, and, you know, mobile nukes,
certain releases, and things like that to help you manage that when something gets pulled.
So the use net part is what gets you the content, Sonar's what downloads the content for
you automatically, and then your indexers are generally, you know, when you manually
log into an indexer, when you're, when I pull down, when I pull down movies and stuff,
so the, I'll go to the indexer, click the link to send it automatically, use in the plugin,
I'll send that NCB file directly to the indexer, the SAP NCBD, the use net downloader for
my server, and then that's how stuff pops up, and Cody does all the cover art and all
that stuff for you. Sometimes you'll have to go in there and rename files. I might do
a thing on management, Sonar, that will include also the fixing idea to some of the movies
that get downloaded with random file names, but in general, you don't have to mess with
the TV stuff so much, the movies you have to kind of do manually. Sometimes I'll download,
you know, the same movie four times, just to, if I have issues, initially getting it
off download four times, and then I might have to come through and delete, you know, three
or four of them, depending on what's going on. But that's how the movies are done, that's
how the TV is done through Sonar, manually downloading movies, the music stuff is done
through Deluge, Deluge, and the indexer I use for that for Torrent is Apollo.rip, which
is now, I can't remember the name of it, but it's a different, a different host. They
got an old backup of Apollo.rip and they reopened it under a different provider. It's a private
only tracker deal, but that's where I get some of my music. I might do one on music for
downloading music and managing music and stuff like Deezer and Bandcamp and managing
all that, portability of music. But that's pretty much for the media box. I don't touch
the media box. It pretty much manages itself. I'll update Plex and Sonar, Plex and the
externally facing services like Plex and my music stuff, which is subsonic every once
in a while. Other than that, I don't touch it. I don't mess with it. I'll reboot it when
it gets weird. And sometimes I'll mess with the object recognition stuff. But in general,
I don't really touch it all that much. That should pretty much get you covered as far
as a high level. And I'll go over a couple of other things. I'll go over Sonar. I'll
do one for Sonar specifically. And then I'll probably do one for music specifically.
Maybe I'll include SAP and ZBD and this stuff. But that's here, say, anyways. Look forward
to giving you some more episodes around the media box and how I've got it all set up.
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