Hello, I'm newish to the Linux PVR or Media Center world and have been putting off this goal of mine off for some time. I have a desktop computer that feeds to our TV which is mounted on wall. The computer acts as a DVD player (got rid of the standalone player when it died) as well as holds our digital movie and music collection on an integrated NAS. Typically I've used Windows Media Center and VLC for playing movies, but with a new system build went to Windows 8 for costs reasons (kept the Linux install- works fine on new system!). Windows 8 means means no Media Center anymore, which I didn't love and hate having to reboot to Windows for all of the time. I also have a cheap HP media remote I found online that works great in Windows and Linux. Watching movies for my family has meant me publishing a page document for the mostly non-technical people in the house to follow which entails turning on the TV, changing the resolution in Windows, making sure the correct audio device is set up, and then launching VLC or back to the TV remote and starting Media Center with the push of button. I've put this off for a year, but I'd like to do this all in Linux with something like XBMC (which I love so far testing it out- it detects the movies in our library and DVDs), VLC on occasion, or another solution recommended by LUGers who have experience with media center options in Linux. So, here is what I am able to do so far: * Map media button on remote in XFCE to XBMC * Video rendering works flawlessly in VLC and XBMC * Library management is sweet with XBMC! Here is what I need help with: * Get NVIDIA Geforce 550 ti to play high quality HDMI audio like it does in Windows (it crackles like crazy in Linux) and set up audio with script in next item below. My last NVIDIA card had the same sound crackles in Linux. * Make BASH script that changes resolution and mirrors (like TwinView) DVI monitor and HDMI TV, with xrandr or other CLI tool, to 1280x720 and then launch media player (I can script well, just need to know what options to pass to alter the video and audio components). * Have another script that disables the TV output and sets the desktop resolution back to native. I will either map this on the remote, run on media center exit, or have an icon on the desktop. * I don't see a 1280x720 option in XBMC; haven't done a ton of research but found something about this perhaps being a theme problem. 1080 is not an option for my computer monitor, nor does the tv support 1080p (I'd like to mirror these at the same resolution, NVIDIA graphics tear for the dumbest of causes in Linux and Windows). Some more info on the the graphics card with HDMI- lspci output: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1) Using Alsa and PulseAudio for audio. I use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers but am not opposed to going back to nouveau / open source if that works better. I am testing the Steam Linux beta and can work out switching back when needed. Some more system specs: OS: Arch Linux x86_64 Kernel Release: 3.6.9-2-ck WM: Xfwm DE: Xfce RAM: 2024 MB / 32049 MB Processor Type: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz The RAM is not a typo, it's cheap and I'm obsessed with RAM disks and this package https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/Anything-sync-daemon/. Anyho, if someone has some experience with like hardware or helpful tips for me, please respond, I'd be much thankful for some help on this project! I've found some tips via Google on the audio crackling for the NVIDIA card, however nothing has gotten it to work how it should. Thanks and happy holidays! -- Jeremy MountainJohnson Jeremy.MountainJohnson at gmail.com