Media PC setup

[Dracio]

Hi, I broke the screen of my old laptop so I've gotten a new one and decided to use the old one as a media center for my TV.

However I can't decide what operating system to use for it. I don't want to rely at all on keyboard or mouse (they will be there but don't want to use them for ANYTHING), so ideally a media specific OS would be preferred, such as media portal, or xbmc.
Secondly, it has to be able to support a netflix app/plugin and a tvcatchup app/plugin, again for use with controller.
I would also really want it to be able to support spotify, although a controller controlled version of spotify I have yet to see.
Last but not least, ideally (although optionally) it would be able to support bluray playback.

Anyone any ideas for OS/software to use for this? Please include costs if anything is paid for, although I would like it all to be free/open source.

 

[Dr_JRE]

http://www.mythbuntu.org/
you might want this Rii Mini wireless keyboard w/ touchpad & L.A.Z.E.R. pointer:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1KT0R77075&nm_mc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r&cm_mmc=OTC-pr1c3grabb3r-_-Keyboards-_-Brainydeal-_-9SIA1KT0R77075
Price ranges from $19 ~ $50

 

[c911darkwolf]

Our Media Center is Windows 7 Pro - but when it starts up it has XMBC Theater Software setup.

The reason is I can get Netflix and Hulu to play reliably on a Windows Based machine, on a Straight XMBC server i still have some issues so I prefer Windows for the time being. I tried Linux Mint for a while, but I could tell a slowness to it and didn't want my family to have to deal with it.

I think there is a HTPC Specific thread on here that might be better for this type of question.

 

[Aristotelian]

This is a great use of an old laptop, and XBMCBuntu would work perfectly. I run Ubuntu with XBMC as an app on my media PC, but I use a wireless mouse in order to access the web through Chromium for streaming video. XBMCBuntu installs Ubuntu as the underlying OS but boots you straight into XBMC.

 

[skittle]

I use OpenELEC on my htpc, but sadly your going to have a hard time getting netflix to run on any linux based OS. Same with bluray support. If you really need the latter two features you are better off sticking with windows