What software do we need to install on our media server?

Now we’ve got Ubuntu Server installed and configured we now have our basic framework in place. Next thing we need to do is to install some applications.

Obviously if you don’t need all of this functionality then you can simply skip the relevant steps.

Record TV Programmes

One of the things we want this server to be able to do is to record TV programmes. So, for this we will Install MythTV.

If you’re coming from a Microsoft background and have never heard of MythTV before, it’s very similar in functionality to Microsoft Windows Media Center. It can be used to record TV shows via Digital Freeview (DVB-T), satellite/Freesat (DVB-S) or Cable (DVB-C). Actually, MythTV is a lot more than Windows Media Center will ever be but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.

Once we’ve recorded these TV shows they’ll be automatically available for playback on our Media Streamers. Pretty much any Streamer that can support DivX playback will be able to play the recordings so don’t worry if you don’t have the same streamers as me.

Serving a Squeezebox

This server will store all our music and we want to be able to stream this music across the network to our Squeezeboxes. So we need to Install Squeezebox Server.

To enhance Squeezebox Server functionality to enable us to generate dynamic playlists on-the-fly we’ll Install MusicIP

Serving content to a PS3 or other UPnP Compatible device

To stream video, music and photos to UPnP compatible devices, such as a PS3, we need to Install MediaTomb.

Automatically download TV shows via Torrents

Another of our requirements was to be able to download TV Shows automatically using torrents and for this we’ll firstly Install Deluge which is a BitTorrent Client. Once we’ve done that we’ll Install FlexGet. FlexGet does all the clever stuff of working out what to download.