Media Center Front-ends, etc

[noiseredux]

Alright so after I got my new PC I knew that my old one would be ripe for "some kind of project." Soon after the stupid little cable receiver in my game room died. *Lightbulb.* I ordered a VGA/S-Video adapter (the TV in my game room is a CRT right now) and it came in last night.

My thought is this PC will just be used to stream videos (YouTube, NetFlix, Hulu, Amazon, Crackle, etc) and watch DVD's (and DVD rips). I suppose it could also do a little bit of emulation or light PC gaming, though it's a single-core processor, so it sucks for games really. And of course - you can't read the text.

Which brings me to the point of all this: Media front-ends!

The PC is currently running Win7. Even after bumping the display settings up to 150%, you basically can't read most text on the screen. But I'm curious, there must be some decent front-end I could use for a project like this where all the text is nice and big? It doesn't have to be Windows, it could also be a Linux setup (though I'm using wifi, so I know that can be an issue with certain builds of Linux).

Keeping in mind that really all I'm looking to do is watch stuff, and ideally it would have nice big text/icons, what would y'all recommend?

Sub-question: Do any media front-ends have some kind of quick search to various streaming video sites? Meaning, say Luke comes over and he wants to watch Full House. Do I need to search Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, etc separately before he decides on an episode, or could one front-end just do all the work for me?

[AppleQueso]

XMBC is probably the most popular HTPC frontend. I'd look into that.

I think you can get it to integrate into those streaming services you've mentioned, but it might require a bit of research and work.

[noiseredux]

looks like XBMC has an add-on that's pretty much what I'm after:

Free Cable: This add-on, located in the third-party Bluecop repository, grabs videos from all sorts of network and cable channels that put their shows up on line, like ABC, CBS, The CW, Food Network, the History Channel, SyFy, USA, and lots more. Generally, you'll only get the last five or so episodes of any series (just like you would if you're watching them online), but it's awesome to be able to watch them on your TV instead of on your computer, mouse-and-keyboard-free.P

so probably XBMC will be the way to go. I'm just not sure if it solves my unreadable text issue. Budget-wise, I'm not sure how long it'll be before I can afford to upgrade the TV in my gameroom - and outside of this issue, I don't have too much reason to do so anyway.

[AppleQueso]

looks like XBMC has an add-on that's pretty much what I'm after:

Free Cable: This add-on, located in the third-party Bluecop repository, grabs videos from all sorts of network and cable channels that put their shows up on line, like ABC, CBS, The CW, Food Network, the History Channel, SyFy, USA, and lots more. Generally, you'll only get the last five or so episodes of any series (just like you would if you're watching them online), but it's awesome to be able to watch them on your TV instead of on your computer, mouse-and-keyboard-free.P

so probably XBMC will be the way to go. I'm just not sure if it solves my unreadable text issue. Budget-wise, I'm not sure how long it'll be before I can afford to upgrade the TV in my gameroom - and outside of this issue, I don't have too much reason to do so anyway.

There's a lot of different skins for XMBC and it's pretty flexible and customizable if you want to put the time into it, so text size shouldn't be a problem at all.

[noiseredux]

yeah probably just re-skinning would help me out.

Maybe this one:

MediaStream has menus with a weightier appearance than Aeon, but the skin still maintains a minimalist approach. Menu text is solid and bold, the menus slide out in a blade-style system that is snappy, and navigation is easy. Since version 0.90 there has been support for SD 4:3 viewing ratio, so if you haven't made the leap to a HD TV yet you can use MediaStream without any scaling. Like Aeon you can set customs backgrounds and use fan art. If you're having trouble keeping up on which of your shows you've watched, take advantage of the unwatched media menu to get a fresh list of all the things you haven't watched yet.

Basically I'll just have to hook up my monitor to do all the installing and setting up, but hopefully after that I'll be good to go on the TV.