Ulukai on 9/12/2007 at 16:11
As a closet wanabee fatty, I've been wanting to put together some kind of Media Centre for my apartment for a good while. I discovered the existence of an open source, C# based project called (
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/) Media Portal on the Internet recently, and it is a JEWEL. Being in possesion of an old Shuttle PC, an HDTV, a bonus payment and a
whole day off, I decided it was time to do something about it.
When I say 'old' Shuttle PC, I mean Windows XP, Athlon 64, 1GB RAM, AGP 6800. I added to this the snappily named (
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/pages/products/data_novat500.html) Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T-500, which handily features two digital tuners so I can watch and record independently, and a remote so I can just sit back on the sofa and relax without having to dig out a keyboard and mouse.
Anyway, the primary reason of this thread is to pimp Media Portal as an alternative to Windows Media Center, as it's a very slick piece of free software with a plugin based architecture.
Here's what it looks like once I had it set up and running to my liking:
Home Screen(
http://img356.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig2ow1.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/2003/mpbig2ow1.th.jpgBrowsing MP3 Albums(
http://img528.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig1nw5.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/135/mpbig1nw5.th.jpgBrowsing Video (e.g. XVid, DivX files etc.)
(
http://img528.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig3lm0.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/781/mpbig3lm0.th.jpgTV Guide(
http://img356.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig4mv6.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img356.imageshack.us/img356/6702/mpbig4mv6.th.jpgExample plugin: Wikipedia(
http://img528.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig5en0.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/9945/mpbig5en0.th.jpgWatching TV (Non fullscreen mode, obviously)
(
http://img520.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpbig6wm9.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/615/mpbig6wm9.th.jpgIt's not without fault, (you have to close the damn thing to configure it which quickly got on my tits until I'd finished setting it up), but if any of you had been considering doing the same it's well worth looking into.
I'd be interested in hearing any other particularly good or bad experiences with Media Center software, be it from MS or otherwise, especially (
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx) Windows Home Server.
trevor the sheep on 9/12/2007 at 16:18
yeh man, i remember using it for a brief period last year when my TV card was still working, it was prone to lockups but i much preferred it to the shitty counter-intuitive interface of GAYcrosoft's GAYdia GAYcenter (of gayness)
Ulukai on 10/12/2007 at 18:35
I bet Hauppauge's "media center" software supplied with it's TV cards gives it a run for it's money in the "This software is ghey" competition, which seems designed specifically to put you off ever buying one of their products ever again.
Hardware developers should stick to making hardware...
Rug Burn Junky on 19/12/2007 at 19:47
I've had an HTPC for years, and I've played around with TV cards in my PC for over a decade.
Right now, I have a Thermaltake Mozart Media PC set-up in my living, jacked through my plasma. It came with a freeware software suite called "iMedian" which I actually thought worked pretty well.
Here's the thing though. For DVD's, I have a pretty good disc changer, runs more quietly than the PC. For music, I have an iPod dock, which lets me run all of the same playlists I normally listen to in my car or on the subway, and if I want access to all of my music on my desktop, I still prefer Winamp. For TV and DVR, my cable box not only works smoothly, but is the only way I can get the HD channels, and, quite frankly, gets much better reception than the tuner ever did.
In short, the more I build my set up, the less I use my PC on it. In fact, the only thing I use it for now is to watch TV shows I download from usenet, or to play games. Occasionally, I'll surf on it, but really only when I'm watching football and want to keep up on my fantasy team in real time (I'll PIP it, and swap back and forth with the games themselves). For games, obviously, the front end is useless, and for avi files, while the front end can sort things a bit, I'm perfectly comfortable just using windows for it. In fact, I yanked the TV card and gave it to my nephews only a month or two later. With a gyro mouse, windows is easy enough to run that the front end becomes more of a hindrance than a help.
All in all, other than playing around with it at first to tweak it, I can't say I've ever used the media center. Do you find that it really adds value?
I mean, if you're cramped for space, and relegated to only using OTA TV broadcasts, I can see the value, but other than that, my experience has been that it does a little bit of everything, but nothing well.
As for other media software, like I said, I thought the iMedian stuff worked really, really well. The Hauppage WinTV software is pretty atrocious, but there are switches you can use to get to "WinTV Classic" or something of the sort, which I found was much, much easier to use, more powerful, and more stable. I didn't use that on a media PC, however, but on my main desktop so I could watch TV in my office. It was strictly so I could have an S-vid input for my cable box.
I've also used the ATI media software, which was hands down the worst I've ever come across. I simply stopped using my ATI HDTV Wonder because the software pretty much crippled it. Buggy, unstable, and just plain didn't work. For the past year, I've been pissed off that it won't recognize the VIVO aspect of my vidcard, and there's no way for me to run it under XP, simply because ATI's software is fucked. It worked (after hours of tweaking) under XP64, but I gave up trying to get it right under XP after about two weeks of fiddling, and installing and reinstalling drivers.
ATI did, however, have one great feature that I miss. It would transcribe the closed captioning from a TV show into an html file, and take a screenshot every 15-30 seconds to go with it. It was mostly a gimmick, but a pretty cool one nonetheless.
Ulukai on 19/12/2007 at 21:22
There's a lot in that experience I can identify with. I thought I'd make more use of it - but having had it set up for two weeks or so now, the only thing I'm now using it for is very occasionally recording TV shows in the hope I'll get time to watch them, since my digital box doesn't have recording ability.
My 360 takes care of playing back DVDs (and divx files since last weeks update), and my stereo recognises USB sticks so I use that for playing back both CDs and MP3s. And both of these are quieter than the media centre.
Upon triumphantly showing my girlfriend how I had recorded University Challenge ("It was the only thing on at the time") she comes out with, "It's a bit of a faff, isn't it?"
Yes, yes it is.
And on top of this, a first generation Athlon 64 (hot hot hot) in a Shuttle PC case with a beefy video card means I don't really like leaving it on when I'm out to record stuff anyway, in case it catches fire...