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How to burn the image ?
How to build your customized ISO ?
How to add contents to my remote box ?
How to set up my display efficiently ?
How to disable VidiX ?
How to enable VidiX for nVidia cards?
I have a nVidia card but TV-Out doesn't work :-(
How Can I use Matrox TV-Out ?
My Matrox card doesn't seem to work with High Resolution movies ...
How can I use my DXR3/Hollywood+ card ?
I can't access to the menu when using my DXR3 card
The screen goes weird when I insert a DVD using my DXR3 card
I have no HDD and my EPIA (V) motherboard refuses to boot GeeXboX
My remote controller isn't recognized
How to make my remote supported by GeeXboX ?
The screen hangs on 'Cleaning Ram Disk' and I see 'sh: can't access tty: job control turned off'
The system hangs on 'Launching MPlayer' and ejects the CD
Does GeeXboX supports 5.1 Audio Output ?
How to use my soundcard's digital SPDIF out ?
My generated customized ISO don't work.
Can I watch subtitled movies ?
The A/V (audio/video) seems to be down ...
How can I modify the GeeXboX boot logo ?
How can I modify the menu items ?
How can I create my own GeeXboX's theme ?

Some users reported to us problems with burning the image and booting GeeXboX. Most are Windows users. Be aware that WinRAR seems to recognize the .iso files as archives and tries to extract the files from it. IT'S A BAD IDEA TO DO THAT ! The provided ISO is a ready-to-burn file. It's already bootable. You just have to burn it with "File/Burn Image..." under Ahead Nero in DAO MODE or with cdrecord under Linux. If you can, please finalize the writing session.

For many reasons, you may want to build a customized version of GeeXboX. You just have to download the GeeXboX's generator. This comes with both Linux/Win32/MacOSX GUI versions. You may have to modify the configuration files to suit your needs (for editing network configuration or tv in/outputs settings, for example).

If you use GeeXboX as a dedicated Media Center on a computer from your LAN, you can drop files to it from your regular computer. As there's no Samba server on GeeXboX, it won't be accessible as a "Windows share". However, you can access to the GeeXboX hard drives through any kind of FTP client.
Simply connect to the GeeXboX IP using an FTP client using geexbox as a login and ftp as a password. Be aware that GeeXboX is mounted in ReadOnly and so, copying files to / will only copy them to RAM, not on disk. If you want to drop files to the GeeXboX disks, please copy them to "/mnt/disk X part X" instead.

There's also a Windows utility that let you map local drives to FTP location, which is called WebDrive . You can also directly use Windows Add Network Places wizard which lets you create an FTP location that will be shown up in "My Network Places" on explorer.

Enabling the TV-Out is achieved with the help of multiple small programs dedicated to different video card brands. Currently we use atitvout for ATI cards, s3switch for S3 cards and nvtv for nVidia cards (and possibly intel i810 and 3dfx cards). The configuration of those programs is done in /etc/tvout. In that file, you can choose the TV standard that you want (pal, ntsc...) and you can also modify specific options for nvtv.

Please note that you can also define the output aspect (say 4:3 or 16:9 display) in this file through the line :

TVOUT_ASPECT="4:3"

This parameter will be used both for TVOut and regular (CRT/TFT) display. You can also specify the desired height/width values and your display's horizontal and vertical frequencies in case you have an unusual screen like WideScreens or videoprojector. This can be done by editing the /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf file. Default parameters are shown below (please uncomment lines related to frequency if you want to use them) :

screenw=800
screenh=600
#monitor-hfreq=31.5k-50k
#monitor-vfreq=50-90

In some rare cases, your computer may not support the VidiX hardware acceleration of your display adapter. You can, of course disable it easily, resulting in a lack of performance, according to your configuration. To do so, simply replace the vo=cvidix,vesa line in your /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf file with the following one : vo=vesa and regenerate the ISO.

Since MPlayer 1.0pre4, you're now able to enable support for hardware video acceleration (VidiX). This features is for now experimental and should be tested further before we can enable it by defaut. Theoretically, when activated, the image should be smoother and more pretty and you should be able to use zoom/pan-scan operations. To do so, simply use the generator and remove the /etc/mplayer/no_nvidia_vidix file. Please report to us whether your computer works with VidiX support or not, specifying the nVidia card you're using.

This is one of the disadvantages of closed source drivers. nVidia didn't provide the specifications of its graphic cards to the open source community. As a result, nvtv (the software needed to use TV-Out) is, at now, not really compliant with some GeForce 3/4 cards and TV-Out may not work. Spam nVidia's tech support, requesting open source drivers ;-)

Matrox cards may not work properly using the TV-Out mode. You may want have a look at the Matrox WebSite to flash your card's BIOS.

This is unfortunately a known bug of GeeXboX with Matrox cards. These latters really don't seem to accept video signal with a width greater than 1024 pixels.

Users with this kind of hardware decompression card do NOT even need to have a video board and sound card to use GeeXboX. The drawbacks are that only the tvout connector can be used with DXR3 cards (no CRT display). You may have to set the required image type (PAL/NTSC) in the /etc/tvout file and the kind of audio output you want to use (Analog or SPDIF) in /etc/audio.

The DXR3/H+ card is a hardware MPEG 1/2 decoder. Efforts have been made to enable the hardware decompression on GeeXboX so that old computers will be able to play DVDs. Nevertheless, for technical reasons, it's not possible to add filters to the image (like OSD) and so menu won't be accessible when playing this kind of files (this problem does not exist when playing MPEG 4/DivX files).

When using DXR3 cards, the Autoplay feature prevents DVDs from working. You have to press the 'Q' key to exit after you've inserted the DVD, then use the menu to launch the DVD again.

Due to some buggy BIOSes, EPIA and EPIA V motherboards (not M series) refuse to boot from the GeeXboX CD (more commonly, all LiveCDs using IsoLinux as a bootloader) if no hard-drive is physically plugged to. There's a trick to still get it to boot from CD, without any HDD. Simply go to the BIOS and declare a fake HDD, setting its properties to Manual instead of Auto. Declare it using CHS mode, with 0 heads, 0 sectors and 0 cylinders. Then select the appropriate BIOS option to prevent it from stopping on any error that may occur (option Halt On No Error).

As mentioned, the GeeXboX has been compiled for the ATI Remote Wonder. It doesn't imply that other remotes are not supported. The Logitech, Miro PCTV, RealMagic, Leadtek, Creative, RM-S6, RX-V850, AniMAX and Hauppage remotes are also supported but you will have to regenerate the ISO to use them. For other remotes, if you are able to rebuild GeeXboX and are the owner of a remote controller, please mail to us the LIRC configuration file you're using and we'll include it to our OS.

In case your remote is not in the list of supported remotes, you can, add support for it (the only requirement is that your model is supported by LIRC). You may have a look at LIRC-compatible remotes, at the following URL : http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/. Three files are needed : lircd_remote, lircd_remote.conf, and lircrc_remote. The .conf file MUST be the one available on the last URL. The two others are files that have to be created by you and they must describe bindings between your remote's buttons and the actions that have to be done by GeeXboX. You may want have a look at the GeeXboX's sources or in CVS (in packages/lirc/) for examples of current bindings for supported remotes. Once done and fully working, please send us your configuration files (in ENGLISH only) so that we can add the official support for the releases to come.

This problem is due to your CDROM. The GeeXboX may not be able to find the request drivers for you CD drive (i.e. drive is not supported). Not just a drive error, it seems to be the device controller (especially for USB/FireWire/SCSI/RAID devices) that is not recognized.

This means that MPlayer has crashed. This may be due to a video driver problem. Try to build your own GeeXboX without vidix support (VESA only).

Unfortunately, for now, only stereo audio output is supported. Besides, AC3 streams are converted to stereo :-( If you want true AC3 output, you'll have to add the ac=hwac3, (warning: don't forget the comma) line into mplayer.conf.

GeeXboX supports both analog and digital audio output through regular JACK, connectors or RCA SPDIF one. By default, output is set to analog. You can change this by editing the /etc/audio file :

# Output using SPDIF (yes/no), otherwise ANALOG output
SPDIF=no

Remember that you will need to set your output to SPDIF if you want to connect your soundcard to an external amplifier for decoding AC3/DTS streams (using pass-through mode).

In some cases, ISOs generated under Windows systems don't work. If you want to extract the generator archive with WinZip, you will have to uncheck the TAR file smart CR/LF conversion option in the Configuration / Options / Miscellaneous menu. Please note that if you want to modify the configuration files, you'll have to use an UNIX compatible text editor or to use dos2unix against your modified files.

Based on MPlayer, the GeeXboX enables you to watch such movies, supporting most of the subs formats (e.g. MicroDVD, SubRip, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, MPsub, VobSub, SPU Streams and Closed-Captions).
The only thing you'll have to do, is to burn your CD this way (video and sub must have exactly the same name) :

* yourmovie.{avi, mpg, ogm ...}
* yourmovie.{srt, sub, txt ...}

You can disable subtitles from being displayed by pressing the "v" key, if you don't want them to be loaded ;-)

Due to some problems (CD errors, low CPU ...), you may have lost the audio/video synchronisation. This can be corrected by adjusting the A/V sync, using the "+" and "-" buttons. One plays audio 100ms before video, the other one plays it 100ms after.

First of all, you have to choose or create a typical picture using your favorite graphical tools such as The Gimp ;-). To display a boot image, Linux uses the FrameBuffer and a tool called BootSplash. The image used by the BootSplash can be any kind of image file. Simply remember that you can't change the boot logo using the generator, it has to be done by recompiling the full distribution.

All that you have to do is to replace the current boot logo image by your own. To do so, simply modify the content of the theme archive. You image file has no more restiction other than being at a resolution of 800x600 pixels using a 24 bits depth. Once you got your file, simply save it in JPEG format, name it bootsplash-800x600.jpeg and replace the current one.

You also need to edit the bootsplash-800x600.cfg contained in the theme archive. This file describes the image properties, such as the position and color of the loading bar. Even if this file contains many options only the ones about the progress bar are really meaningful. Here's a sample of this options.

# progress bar
box silent inter 224 393 224 404 #fd8100
box silent 224 393 601 404 #fd8100
box inter 224 393 224 404 #fd8100
box 224 393 601 404 #fd8100
box noover 110 20 680 500 #333333E0

For a complete list of available options of this config file and documentation, please see the BootSplash documentation.

Once all of this is done, simply replace the current theme's files by the 2 ones you've just created and start building the distribution.

The menu items are described in a file called menu.conf in ./packages/MPlayer/config/ If you're aware of MPlayer's menu's configuration file, you may modify the items' language or delete ones that you don't need, but please do not modify it ;-)

A theme is an archive, packaging TrueType fonts, a video background, an optional audio background and a specific Linux boot logo (i.e a JPEG image and its associated configuration file, see above for how to create it).

The current background can be found in ./sources/theme-*/. It is simply called background.avi. Another background may exist, called background-audio.avi and is displayed only when playing audio streams. You may replace these files by any kind of playable video. The only restriction is the codec which must be supported by MPlayer (MPEG4 should be fine).

By default, our fonts are available in the ./sources/theme-*/ folder (casual.ttf in the classic theme). Whether you decide to use different fonts (and different font names), you'll just need to put your .ttf files in the theme archive (theme-*.tar.bz2).