Skip to main content

GeeXBox Turns Old Hard Disk-Less PCs into an HTPC

I prefer watching DVDs on a DVD player attached to a TV, rather than watching on my PC. DVD players are so much simpler to operate – just power it on, insert the disc and watch it. No need to wait for it to boot up, no need to start a media player and most importantly, I can shut it off instantly by flipping the mains off – no need to wait (again) while it systematically shuts itself down. Besides, watching a movie on the PC is so distracting – I’m often tempted to go online to read new mails or messages or feeds.

geexbox-logo

There is one solution to this problem – GeeXBox. GeeXBox is a small media center Linux live CD distribution that can run on any PC and play almost any media like DVDs and online streams without any codecs, without any OS (Windows, Linux, Mac etc) and without even a hard disk! GeeXBox is perfect to transform your old hard disk less PC lying on the corner into the ultimate media center PC. GeeXBox can play all kinds of files – VCDs, DVDs, DivX, XviD, AVI, Ogg, MP3, MP4, anything. Simply boot your PC from the GeeXbox bootable media and it will automatically ejects it after copying itself to the memory. The optical drive is now free to load your DVD discs for playing.

geexbox-menu

But that’s not how a DVD player operates, does it? You still have to keep the GeeXBox CD handy to power up the PC, and wait … how do you open the optical drive when your PC is turned off? No, that wouldn’t work.

In order to make your PC behave completely like a DVD player you have to install GeeXBox into your hard disk. To install GeeXBox, boot from the CD and at the boot prompt type "install" and hit enter. This will launch the installer and from there it’s like installing any Linux distro. If you have done that before you will have no problem in installing GeeXBox, otherwise you can follow the installation guide. GeeXBox requires just an 8MB partition to install.

Now every time you power on your PC, you will get a boot menu with the option of loading GeeXBox or the other operating system(s). When you need to watch a movie and only a movie, load GeeXBox, insert the movie DVD and play it. When you need to turn off, stop the movie and hit Exit in GeeXBox’s menu and your PC will turn off instantly – just like a DVD player.

Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 3, 2008 at 7:29 AM

    nice this will help me when i make my HTPC
    does it support remote controls

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kaushik PatowaryDecember 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM

    Yes, it supports remote controls. Also checkout the GeexBox Generator which allows you to customize your GeexBox distro.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.
17 comments
Read more

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.
1 comment
Read more

Diagram 101: Different Types of Diagrams and When To Use Them

Diagrams are a great way to visualize information and convey meaning. The problem is that there’s too many different types of diagrams, so it can be hard to know which ones you should use in any given situation. To help you out, we’ve created this diagram that lays out the 7 most common types of diagrams and when they’re best used:
Post a Comment
Read more