Tuesday, March 8, 2011

5 Excellent Linux Media Servers for the Enterprise

You can share your music, videos, and photos on your network via regular folder shares, but using a media server gives you additional functionality and lets you stream to more devices.


A Linux media server has a home in the enterprise because it's a superior tool for storing, archiving, and sharing company multimedia presentations.


Here are five different media servers that you can run on Linux machines:

MediaTomb

MediaTomb is an open source UPnP media server, implementing the UPnP MediaServer V 1.0 specification, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).


It runs on x86, Alpha, ARM, MIPS, Sparc, and PowerPC with support for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Mac OS X.


MediaTomb lets you watch or listen to your media from UPnP compatible media players and devices.


There's on-the-fly transcoding for converting content format not supported by the player or device.


In addition to browsing and playing your media you can view their metadata, such as album and artist or photo details, with EXIF thumbnail support.


You can even watch YouTube videos and create links to other Internet content to stream them via UPnP.


You're also provided with a web interface where you can add/remove/edit/browse your media from your computer or device with a browser.

There are binary packages available for Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu, Mac OS X, and several other distributions.



MediaTomb has a highly flexible configuration, giving you  ample control of the server. They offer great documentation on compiling from source, customization, and the user interface.

Jinzora Media Server
This is an open source web-based media streaming and management system, written in PHP and licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).


It can install on web servers supporting PHP in Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and other platforms.


It can also be embedded in a content management system (CMS) or in another PHP-based application.


Its Groupware feature even lets you create a social network or community to discuss, request, and rate content.


Jinzora's themeable web interface doesn't only let you play or stream your media. It serves as an online media library, letting you create play lists and organize, search, and rate content.


Metadata is also supported. It even tries to download missing metadata, such as song lyrics, album covers and artist biographies.


Content can be played directly from the web interface. It can also be accessed via an external software or hardware player using the Streaming mode or pushed out to a player with the Jukebox mode.


Content can be transcoded or resampled to a media format or bit rate supported by the player.


For system requirements and installation help you can visit their help site.

Wizd
Wizd is an open source media server for Syabas-based media players and is released under Public Domain license.


It runs on Linux, Windows, and NAS platforms, requiring less than 10 MB of disk space. It streams to most media players with the Syabas middleware, including the following:
  • Buffalo LinkTheater
  • DigitalRise Xstream Player
  • H&B DNX-8620
  • I-O Data LinkPlayer
  • Omisys DVD PN210V
  • Pinnacle SC 200
  • Quartek I-Box 800
  • Quartek WHD-500
  • Snazio Net Cinema
  • Transgear DVX 500
  • Transgear DVX 700
From your media player you can browse your media through customizable skins. Thumbnail mode lets you easily preview your pictures and the bookmark feature lets you save your spot on MPEG movies. You can also read standard and ISO image DVD backups.

Firefly Media Server

The open source Firefly Media Server uses Apple's Digital Audio Access Protocol (DAAP) to share content with iTunes, Rhythmbox in Linux, and other players that support DAAP.


It's beneficial if you don't want to install or run iTunes on all PCs. It also features on-the-fly transcoding for converting content format not supported.


It's relatively easy to install and use, and features a web-based interface. Though the project isn't under active development, you may still be able to find packages for your distribution under the name mt-daap. Roku also provides the server for Windows and Mac OS X.


MythTV
MythTV  is much more than a traditional media server. Its main function is a digital video recorder (DVR) that gives you similar TV viewing, recording, and play-back functionality to what cable companies provide with set-top-boxes.


It can run on Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is an open source project distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Since 2002 it has been under relatively heavy development and seems to be well maintained.


MythTV lets you watch and record analog and/or digital TV, including HDTV. You can pause, skip, and rewind live or recorded TV.


It features automated commercial detection and skipping so you see just the good stuff. You can also watch and archive DVDs.


The parental controls can help you limit what your children watch. You can manage the settings and recording schedule on the TV or remotely via a web browser.


In addition to the DVR functions, MythTV plug-ins give you the ability to stream photos and videos.


MythTV is comprised of server and client components. You can run the server and client on the same machine, or have one or more servers and clients depending upon how many TVs you want to setup.


Remember, you'll need at least one TV tuner card on the server. Some computers or video cards may also have an S-Video output you can use to get the MythTV interface onto your TVs.


Though MythTV provides great documentation, you may find the preparation and configuration of MythTV relatively lengthy.


Since you're working with video, the higher performance of the server and/or client PCs, the better.


The amount of streams you can simultaneously capture and watch is limited to the performance of the PCs.

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