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BoxStar


Contents

Introduction

BoxStar is a HTPC (Home Theatre PC or Home Cinema PC as we'd prefer to call it in the UK) application. Why should you choose this one instead of one of the well-established alternatives? Without wanting to be too negative about the excellent "competition", here are Boxstar's special features:

Licence

BoxStar is available under the terms of the GNU GPL. See the file COPYING in the distribution's docs directory for full details.

Download

Visit the SourceForge project page to download release files or use other Sourceforge tools. If you want to get developmental versions ahead of releases, use git. This has replaced the subversion (svn) repository). The actual command you will probably want to use to check out a snapshot for the first time is:


  git clone git://boxstar.git.sourceforge.net/gitroot/boxstar/boxstar

Afterwards you can get updates with 'git pull'.

I intend to use the following tags:

Requirements

You need:

All of these are commonly available with the main distributions.

If you want to use a specialist driver with SDL, eg DirectFB, you should read the extra SDL notes, ideally before installing SDL.

Installing

There isn't really anything to be done. Just run the git command or unpack a downloaded tarball and run it straight from its own directory.

To use with ROX make these symlinks inside the directory:

    ln -sf boxstar.py AppRun
    ln -sf boxstar.svg .DirIcon
    ln -sf docs Help

Configuration

See separate page

Usage

To run BoxStar just run boxstar.py which you'll find inside the boxstar directory.

The first time you run BoxStar it will probably go through the process of learning keys for any input devices. Just follow the on-screen prompts.

In normal use, BoxStar uses a system of text menus. Use the up and down arrows to choose items. If there are too many items to fit on one screen the "Previous Page" and/or "Next Page" prompts appear. Trying to move the selection off the top or bottom will change the page for you, or you can move a page at a time regardless of the current selection position by using the left and right arrows.

To activate/open the selected item press the "OK" key (I suggest mapping the Enter key to OK if using a standard keyboard). Some menu entries have extra actions available by pressing the "colour" keys (red/green/yellow/blue, common on remote controls; I use F1-F4 for these on a keyboard). If so, coloured boxes appear at the bottom of the screen to show those actions. For example, a CD/DVD item allows you to unmount or eject it as well as open it, and choose the track to play in case it's a DVD or VCD.

If you use boxstar's optional interface to VDR you can exit from this mode by using the control you've configured to act as the "Power" button.

Development status

See separate page