Media Center Improvements!
Well, I am now working hard at making my Media Center do a whole lot more. Due to my laziness, I made my media center controllable via SSH by running key commands through bash scripts I wrote. To fed you with an example, here is the bash script that starts one of my DVDs:
#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0.0
shopt -s expand_aliases
sudo mount -t iso9660 -o loop,blocksize=512 "$1/Disk 01.iso" /media/isoimage
kaffeine -f -p -d /media/isoimage DVD
exit 0
I also have one that stops the DVD and unloads it from the mount as well. To increase my laziness, I am using the ALSA sound drivers so I can run alsamixer from the command line to increase or decrease the volume to my listening pleasure. All that is missing is finding easy ways to pause and play again the DVD and tell it to make a menu selection. When I get my wireless keyboard and mouse, this will all become unnecessary, but it was a fun challenge to try and I am glad it is working out.
I now have all of my movie DVDs on my media center and am working on putting Monk Season 1 and 2 on it as I write this. Also on my agenda is setting up my media center to accept web input so a passing visitor can control what movie is playing and possibly see a streaming video of it on the website. That is my goal, but I do not know how close it is at this moment.