Media Portal, a very interesting free HTPC frontend

I came across this free front-end Media Portal the other day at it looks very interesting.

I did a search and cannot find any other mention of it on this forum.

Feature List

Highlights are:-

Can be made to look just like MCE 2005 or skinned to your taste.

Integrated DVD player does VMR9 Renderless mode and can use ffdshow for post processing!

Alternatively you can spec' an external player. e.g. TheaterTek

Appears to support a lot of capture / TV cards for viewing and timeshifting.

The manual makes interesting reading regarding its capabilities.

I haven't had chance to install it and give it a go yet so I can't say if it lives up to its claims but definitely feel it's worth a go.

Anyone any experience of this software?

 

Yes, I have been using it since the first version, as it is a spin off from the xbox software xbmc, done by the same team (a nice chap called Frodo)

It is the first application that was console only and then ported to pc!

The feature list is good, the supported tv tuners are pretty varied, but it lacks integration with some remote controls (the app is designed to be mouse driven, left and right clicks to move into and out of menus)

It uses xmltv for the guide data, but xmltv_uk_rt grabber is broken right now so you would have to use the xml data from bleb.org (very fast and reliable)

It records in dvr-ms format, and uses the same streambuffer engine that mce2004/2005 uses. Can also use multiple tuners for watching/recording

And it has been mentioned (briefly) by myself in the elonex artisan thread.

Main thing is that the app is still in a constant state of flux, and gets better with every release, is open source and is also free. YAY!