best Home Theatre PC software combination..?

callmecheez

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Evening,

Unsure of which forum to post this in - so mods please move if appropriate.

I've been playing around with HTPC software recently, and wondered what peoples' opinions were, or what setup they're using.

After trial and error I have discovered the following;

  • MythTV (backend/frontend)- It seems beyond me to actually get this working. I can scan and setup channels, but can't get the front end to talk to the backend. Gave up. (tried Mythbuntu and installing MythTV onto a blank Ubuntu box)

  • MediaPortal (backend/frontend)- Got this up and running (in Windows), but seems slow and unreliable (a lot of crashing, and slow channel changes). Didn't get much further.

  • TVHeadEnd (backend) / XBMC (front end)- I've had the best results with this combination, a fair bit of faff to get the channels sorted, and can't get EPG working in XBMC but viewing and changing channels is nice and quick.

As I said - I just wonder what others are using, and if I'm missing a trick with another piece of software! :)
 
+1 for MediaPortal. Running it in a server with quad tuner and 4 clients throughout the house, sharing 30TB of media. Absolutely rock solid. Was an avid XBMC user before I discovered it 2 years ago.

Not since version 1.2.3 have I experienced the issues you mentioned. Currently running 1.6 and will upgrade to 1.7 when DJBlu updates his EPG grabber.
 
TvHeadend\Openelec for me. As fast as using a sky box and EPG is all working no issues. Yes its a little bit clunky in the XBMC front end still but all very useable. Using the PVR via the web front end is also pretty good
Once you get the hang of setting up the channels and scanning its dead easy. I did a rebuild a while ago and had everything back in about an hour. My kids use it as the backend for their bedrooms PC's as well

I'm also running it on low end AMD e350 box. As its linux based its still very, very quick. And no OS license cost :)

I tried Media Portal and media center under windows 7 but it was slow and clunky. But that may have been mainly down to the e350 hardware. I'm sure its faster on a beefier box
 
Frontend : XBMC with Transparency! skin and custom menus
TV backend : DVBViewer server program

using a couple of external players for ISO playback :

DVD/HD DVD/Blu ray : Total Media Theatre 5
3D Blu ray : Total Media Theatre 6

Other software :

Eventghost - used to run custom scripts and dynamically mapping different remote button configurations depending on which program is running.

AnyDVD HD - used to rip discs/allow multi region playback
 

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