Ubuntu Unleashed: Introducing Entertainer Easy to use Media Center Solution For Ubuntu!

Introducing Entertainer Easy to use Media Center Solution For Ubuntu!

Labels: Applications, Howto, Media Center, News Posted by defcon on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 9:47 AM

Explore the world of the entertainer project:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Entertainer aims to be a simple and easy-to-use media center solution for Gnome and XFce desktop environments. Entertainer is written completely in Python using object-oriented programming paradigm. It uses GStreamer multimedia framework for multimedia playback. User Interface is implemented with Clutter UI-library, which allows sleek OpenGL animated user interfaces. Entertainer also uses other great projects like SQLite, pyIMDBb and iNotify.

The ultimate goal of the project is to create the best media center solution available for any platform. This means that Entertainer should be the best looking, most easy to use and most feature filled media center solution available. Not the easiest goal to achieve. It's a long way, but we have a good start here!
If you are interested in participating in the project, please send me an e-mail to lauri@taimila.com.
RSS-feed of the developer's blog. Get the latest news of the project easily!

Here are some Features:

Movies and TV-series

You can watch movies and TV-Series from your harddrive. Entertainer automatically searches and downloads metadata like cover art from the Internet.

Music library

Let's play music! Entertainer allows you play your favourite tracks easily. Navigate music by artst, album, genre or make your own playlists. Entertainer also automatically downloads album art and lyrics of the tracks.

Photographs

Watch your family photographs from the big screen. Entertainer includes a photoraph library, which allows you easily find your best shots.

RSS-reader

Entertainer includes a simple RSS-reader which allows you to read feeds right from your couch. In Entertainer RSS is called Headlines since it's easier to understand for people who are not IT oriented.

Themes

Entertainer supports themeing! Make your media center look just like you. Creating themes is relatively easy.

Howto Install in Hardy Heron!
Open a Terminal via Applications->Accessories->Terminal
Grab the dependencies...

sudo apt-get install python-notify python-feedparser python-pyvorbis python-pyogg python-eyed3 python-pysqlite2 python-gtk2 python-glade2 python-clutter python-pyvorbis python-imaging python-pyinotify python-imdbpy python-cairo-dev gtk-doc-tools python-cddb subversion

Lets grab the source:
svn checkout http://entertainer-media-center.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ entertainer
Change to entertainer directory
cd entertainer
Lets copy the configs to our home:
cp cfg ~/.entertainer -R

Ok great! Still with me? word...

Lets set our media folders with this nice gui:
cd src
./entertainer-content-management.py
A window will pop up like this:

Click add in each tab to add your media folders, rss feeds, and weather!

Now once your done click close.

Lets execute the backend, which processes the media directories/gui:
./entertainer-backend.py
Once that is setup lets execute the Frontend which is our gui to play with :)
./entertainer-frontend.py

Now you will need the keybindings to play with the gui:

Entertainer can be controlled only with keyboard at the moment. Here is a list of all keys:

F - Toggle fullscreen on/off
P - Toggle pause/play when video or audio is playing.
S - Stop playback
H - Navigate to home screen. Press this anywhere and main menu will be displayed.
I - Toggle information view when watching photograph in fullscreen mode
1,2,3,4 - Change video playback aspect ratio
Arrow keys - Navigate menus
Enter - Select current menu item
Backspace - Navigate to previous screen

Please note that this is a pre-release and work in progress program, so it will have tons of bugs and will be slow, because it isnt optimized/finished yet.

Links:	Entertainer homepage Entertainer Code Page Entertainer WiKi! Entertainer on Launchpad!
Blogs:	Lauri Taimila's Blog Paul Hummer's Blog Joshua Scotton's Blog Matt Laymans's Blog

Please report bugs and issues at this link to help improve this awesome application

Comments (10)

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0 Vote up Vote down

BilliShere · 881 weeks ago

so lemme get this straight if i want to use this as a media center always just like the one in vista..

i should add

./entertainer-backend.py

to the startup list in sessions?

BTW awesome post..

1 reply · active 881 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

defcon 52p · 881 weeks ago

no, add the full path like this, "python /path/to/app.py"

0 Vote up Vote down

mrphoenix · 880 weeks ago

Please help me:

phoenix@phoenix-desktop:~$ cd entertainer

phoenix@phoenix-desktop:~/entertainer$ cd src

phoenix@phoenix-desktop:~/entertainer/src$ ./entertainer-backend.py

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "./entertainer-backend.py", line 29, in <module>

import dl

ImportError: No module named dl

phoenix@phoenix-desktop:~/entertainer/src$ ./entertainer-frontend.py

** (./entertainer-frontend.py:6225): WARNING **: failed to bind GLXGetProcAddress or GLXGetProcAddressARB

Couldn't connect to the backend server. Execution aborted!

Make sure that Entertainer backend server is up and running.

phoenix@phoenix-desktop:~/entertainer/src$

1 reply · active 879 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

defcon 52p · 879 weeks ago

did u install all the dependencies?

0 Vote up Vote down

charclo · 880 weeks ago

Are you running 64 bit linux. Because that's a known bug, a fix is on the way.

2 replies · active 879 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

defcon 52p · 879 weeks ago

cool, im glade im not 64 bit yet, too many issues it seems with a ton of apps

0 Vote up Vote down

mrphoenix · 879 weeks ago

Yes, im in x64.

Lets waiting for the fix...

0 Vote up Vote down

Charclo · 877 weeks ago

@defcon, Entertainer has moved to launchpad so these installation instructions aren't up to date anymore. Could you update them? Or add a disclaimer that they aren't up to date anymore? Where also bringing out a 0.1 release very soon (Normally Juli 14) and then where providing a PPA repository.

Thanks in advance

0 Vote up Vote down

Matt Layman · 872 weeks ago

@defcon, thanks for the initial write up. We still have users who are directed to Entertainer because of this post. Could you edit the post and point to some new installation instructions? A bunch of users were getting confused by the old Google Code instructions, and I have to answer the same questions over and over again. I've written some short instructions at launchpad. They can be found here: https://answers.launchpad.net/entertainer/+questi.... Again, thanks for the write up, it really attracted a lot of interest.

+1 Vote up Vote down

cmUgalde 1p · 842 weeks ago

Michael Charclo Magic!

Sorry but not write English and use translators to google.

Python-Clutter is not in my repositories Intrepid Ibex 8.10, can I use to change the libraries: libclutter-0.8-0,
libclutter-gst-0.8-0, libclutter-gtk-0.8-0, libclutter-cairo-0.8-0?

Congratulations to the team!

Gracias