Media Portal PC to TV interface for Windows

[Neo Neko]

Many of us have set up dedicated media PCs. And used varrying softwares. Most of the best being linux based of course. Geexbox, Movix, Myth TV, etc. A few software like Zoomplayer offer a better TV interface for Windows. I saw a link to Media Portal over at /. and gave it a download. I must say I am impressed. If any of you have had experience with Windows XP Media Center Eddition then you will know what to expect. The only difference I am aware of is that Windows XP is not strictly required. I am still reading but it looks like this may be runnable under 98. For alpha software [This is the first public release of it AFAIK] the interface is slick and functional. And fairly featurefull. I have only gotten it to crash once. And it was reproducable. But not a huge issue. Had to do with using the TV interface when no channels were defined. My only real gripe is that it is written in C# and not exactly the snappiest program I have seen. [Blame C#] But nothing bad. And it plays movies fine. I have it now set up as the shell for my XPMCE PC for the main logon. It works that good.

So if you have .net installed you might want to give Media Portal (http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/) a try.