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Why can't my washing machine/dryer/microwave send my cellphone an alert when it's done and I'm in another room?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.washer&hl=en

Why can't I turn on the lights at home from the grocery store so I don't have to carry my groceries in while it's dark?

http://www.smarthome.com/android_apps.html

Why can't I turn on the jacuzzi during a rough day at work so it's ready when I get home?

http://www.balboawatergroup.com/iphone-Application

Why can't my DVD player turn off my lights and close my blinds when it's time to watch a movie and then turn the lights back on when I pause it to get a drink?

DVD player? What decade are you living in?
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_MEDIAPORTAL_1/15_Customization/Home_Automation

Why can't my refrigerator detect what's in it and suggest recipes and tell me what's expired?

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50364798/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Why can't I check to see if I forgot to turn the stove off after I left the house?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/22/2816405/samsung-smart-oven-android-app-control

Why can't my sprinklers check the weather forcast and put off watering if it's supposed to rain?

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/10/smart-lawn-sprinklers-cut-down-on-water-waste/

Why can't my blinds and windows automatically open and close to regulate the temperature in the house?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass

Are there any other inventions of the past 20 years that you missed and want me to google for you? Or do you think you've got it now? Tech tip: Put the world "Smart" in front of whichever thing you're looking for in your search and generally the first link will be the one you want.

HTPC with MediaPortal (only runs on Windows - win 7 works pretty well for this), OTA reception with decent roof-mounted antenna (find your reception report) and ForTheRecord for PVR functionality.

I would LOVE to have a simple 1 hour TV buffer. No record, no storage, just a 1 hour TV buffer to pause, FF, rewind. It cannot be that hard to make a simple inline buffer like that. But the likelyhood of seeing it in the next decade is slim partly because of patents and partly because there is no ongoing revenue stream from it.

It is here now. We use open source Team-MediaPortal as the main family TV - buffer limited only by the HD space you allow it to use. There is no going back to "primitive" TV's once you have used something like this - very annoying on a primitive TV where I can't pause a channel for an hour or two while we finish dinner, to continue to the show after - or watch one channel and record another (if you have a duel channel card installed). Also the "online videos" menu choice is getting more and more use each year, it will not be long before the free to air TV will hardly be used at this house - which is great IMO. Only thing really missing if for some smart cookies to bundle software like this into the TV hardware - and no, the most advanced TV's on the market with their HD buffer and crappy youtube surfing interface do not come even close (A friend bought some ~$5K "advanced" Sony TV - and was blown away by our Team-MediaPortal + ~$500 TV setup which left it in the dust for features and interface.

I do. I saved ~$100/month by axing Comcast and downloading torrents of all my favorite shows.

I built an HTPC for ~$600. I use MediaPortal to do playback. The plugins for it do an amazing job of automatically associating files with episodes, downloading art, keeping track of which episodes you've watched, etc. Similar stuff for Movies too. Throw in a Harmony remote and it's even wife-friendly enough that I don't have to do anything. I highly recommend it.

Well, I guess the key starting point is what operating system are you running on? But for my rather extensive movie and tv collection, on windows I've found Mediaportal: http://www.team-mediaportal.com to be fantastic with its range of plugins to cope very well with TV and movies. Specifically the MP-TVSeries plugin for TV, which interfaces with the TVDB and gets all the information you suggest you want about your shows, including actor information, fanart, banners, posters, thumbnails, and the list continues. You can also sync all these details with an online tracking website such as the relatively new trakt.tv so you and your buddies can see what you recently watched (all done automatically once you have an account at the website and configure the plugin). There is an equivalent for movies called movingpictures which does pretty much the same thing, and you can set up your own categories for sorting too. Mediaportal is a spin-off from XBMC, but is also opensource, and free, but only runs on windows (and makes a very good HTPC software on the whole). So if you're not running windows, maybe try XBMC instead. That is just my personal experience, your mileage may vary.

Have you tried Mediaportal? It is free, has a ton of plug ins and skins to make it into anything you want, has a nice UI, really stable, for HTPCs I'd say Mediaportal is better than XBMC as far as experience IMHO.

As for TFA, it doesn't really matter whether they use the keys or not, the secret is out. From watching the videos from the hacker conference once they got the keys it was game over thanks to flaws in the core design of the PS3. As we have seen the "smart cow" analogy is all too true, once one figures out the trick it quickly will be picked up by others who will run with it.

Personally I don't get why the console makers trip over themselves trying to block other usage. I thought the PS3 original idea was the smart one, give them a way to play with the hardware but not get to the parts required to run games. Hell I'd have gone one further and allowed access to ALL the hardware via a sandbox except the crypto required to run games, so that anybody could add any media center style front end they wanted. It would have kept the hackers happy by giving them most of the hardware to play with AND could have sold more units by giving people media options, it may have even caused a cottage industry to pop up with VARs selling different front end enabled consoles to the masses.

I guess the industry will never learn. They continue to shoot themselves in the foot, all for the sake of DRM that just screws the customers while painting a "fuck with me!" sign on it for the hackers. Stupid is as stupid does I suppose.

It sounds like you spent too much time on researching the ripping and not enough researching the media center softwares. I found MS's Media Center to be boorish at best, often forcing me to use third party media managers for pulling movie and TV show information.

If you're sticking with Windows, MediaPortal has a great community (especially for skins) and installing both ffdshow and haali media splitter will cover all codecs needed. MediaPortal also has great support for DVR functions and works with most DVB cards (even my old ATI All-In-Wonder Pro from '97). When I was running it, I found the tv-over-ethernet stuff very useful when I used the DVB cards (one computer with tv tuners that shares to all media centers), and would definitely use it again if we decide to get cable or satellite.

These days I'm using XBMC due to the lack of interest for DVR functionality. main room running Linux Mint and the bedrooms running XP. I particularly enjoy the built-in media manager and extreme ease of setup. If you have media on different machines, you can add them all to one folder similarly to how Win7 uses the libraries feature (But better. Much, much better). There's also a quality iPhone app that you can use to browse media, use as a remote, etc. I use that in addition to the webpage and IR remotes so I never have to be too far away from the remote. This is a key feature when dealing with children under the age of 5.

I did try Boxee for a stint, but it seemed to be too internet-focused and took an unacceptable amount of time to display local files through the Movies or TV show displays. I thought it did a great job of displaying and playing the online content, but when the primary source is local media and all pertinent bug reports get set to "will not fix", I'll pass. The $199 boxee box is tempting, but only if I can run XBMC on it instead.

If you don't have kids, I recommend the Gyration media center remotes. They do all that a universal remote does in addition to being used as a mouse/keyboard/media remote for the computer. If you do have kids, go with an older Phillips MCE remote. The older IR receivers work with XP, Vista, Win7, and Linux, whereas the newer ones only do Vista, Win7, and Linux. Not a huge deal if you have new equipment, but if you want to use older equipment that can make a difference.

Both the Radeon and Radeonhd work fine, no fiddling needed, at least with my X1250 card. And I can watch 720p content flawlessly, while some Windows users seem to have trouble doing.

Vendor supported OSS drivers rock!

That is why I like the new Windows 7 Media Center. It automatically downloads the guide every night and any show I want I can right click on and choose "record all" and it will record every time it comes on. Pretty simple to use really, plus the new Internet TV where all the major channels like CBS and FOX online load their programming just like the regular guide is a nice touch. I just picked up a $25 ATI capture USB stick off of Woot! and all was golden. No muss, no fuss, no hassles.

For those still on XP I would heartily recommend mediaportal as it is free, has the ten foot interface, with plugins can add all kinds of extras like Internet Radio, pretty easy to customize,can download guidea automatically, all around just a great piece of software to turn a PC you had lying around into a Media Center. Either choice works quite well for a DIY DVR.

I don't know about him but I can tell you what I give my customers who want that style of setup, and it is Mediaportal. It is easy to use, thanks to plugins you can do all sorts of extras like program guides and Internet radio/TV, they have a pretty good list of supported capture cards in all price ranges so finding one that will fit your budget shouldn't be hard. And if you have family the interface is VERY easy and friendly.

That is of course if you are wanting a lightweight one, as it runs great on XP Home/Pro. If you go Windows 7 I would suggest Media Center, as it has pretty nice features like program guides and Internet TV as well. Oh and if you need a cheap box to build it in that looks nice I would point out this one if you are not the DIY type. I have sold a couple of these to customers and they are quite happy with them. They are not too big, are easy to work on or add cards to, and the all black design looks good in a TV cabinet as I can attest to as that is what the last one I sold is doing right now connected to a 50in widescreen.

If you don't mind one that looks a little more "PCish" there is this which has both x1 and x16 PCI-E slots, so you can do transcoding and GPU offloading. But hopefully this has given you a few ideas on where to begin. With Mediaportal and a cap card just about relatively decent PC can be turned into a nice HTPC with a an easy to use interface. Good luck!

Or you could just slap in a $60 card and get DVI and full hardware accelerated decoding. And computers are REALLY cheap for off lease now. As you can see here they have models starting at $39.

For a nice pretty black one that would make a good HTPC you could get this which at 3Ghz is more than plenty for 1080p. I have sold a few of these to customers and they are compact, quiet, easy to work on, and built like tanks. Just add a capture card and mediaportal and you will have a nice HTPC.

So if somebody wants to buy a Ps3 for playing games and have BD as a bonus, cool. But buying one just for a media center does seem like extreme overkill to me.

If you're happy with XBMC, don't switch. But MediaPortal has grown into a nice alternative. Stable enough to make the wife and kids happy. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

For those thinking of setting up an HTPC, it's worth checking out as a possible option.

I don't know if XBMC is or not, but Mediaportal sure is, and Mediaportal + XP = about the easiest to use homebrew DVR I've ever tried. Like the above poster I tried MythTV and just couldn't keep it running for any length of time, and Mediaportal is easy peasy and so far pretty stable.

Oh it is Open Source too, if you care about playing with the code.

I don't know if XBMC is or not, but Mediaportal sure is, and Mediaportal + XP = about the easiest to use homebrew DVR I've ever tried. Like the above poster I tried MythTV and just couldn't keep it running for any length of time, and Mediaportal is easy peasy and so far pretty stable.

Oh it is Open Source too, if you care about playing with the code.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

It ain't dirt cheap like a beagle, but if you want it to work any format you can throw at it something like this would be your best bet. It has an Atom dual, ION graphics, 2Gb of RAM, 320Gb HDD, and a slim DVD burner to top it off. Put in a cheap capture card and you are ready to go.

And if you have an XP Pro license lying around you can look up "TinyXP Beast Edition" which is an ultra stripped down XP Pro that only uses 63Mb of RAM and almost no CPU, great for running something like XMBC or my favorite Mediaportal. Of course you can always go with the new Win7 HP, but I figure why add the extra bloat if you don't need it. But the above box with either media center sounds like just what you are looking for, something that will play all formats and still look nice in the entertainment center.

As you said, the original xbox w/ XBMC was IMHO the best (or perhaps one of the best) options for a HTPC. Unfortunately, the original xbox really can only deal with SD content. I was able to get *some* 720P content working, but the Pentium Celeron processor just doesn't have the oomph for HD.

I've been running the Windows port of XBMC (MediaPortal) http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ on a computer hooked up to my TV w/ mixed results.

I never tried the P4 version but considering the heat of the early P4s that wouldn't be surprising. I got turned onto them when my school was tossing out a bunch of them after upgrading the secretaries and nobody wanted them because they were "only" a P3 733MHz. I sold several to SOHOs who think they are just wonderful bookkeeping machines, turned a couple into great multi-format DVD players and sold them, and still have 2 I kept for myself and the fam.

As for the girlfriend/wife test I bet I could get it to pass with the P4. Those early P4s could be cooled with low rev fans if you used a fat heatsink and with the Compaq case being metal having the heatsink near the top would simply help transfer heat. I did sell one of the P3s to a married guy and got the wife to approve by showing her how simple it was to use. I put a white face of the DVD (so it would be pretty and match the case) and loaded up mediaportal which as you can see by the link adds to the pretty while giving a nice big coating of easy on top.

I have learned through my own exp if you want to make a female happy with tech the best way is to make it easy for HER to use it, not what we as guys would consider easy. They HATE lots of menus, buttons, and extra crap that they will have to figure out, and I have found many are tech phobic. By loading up mediaportal on top of the XP that the boxes came with you give her a nice easy to use menu with easy to spot icons in a simple circle interface. And of course the guy was smart enough to take my advice and pick up a wireless keyboard and mouse(girls HATE wires running everywhere) and pick up a copy of AoE I cheap. Don't ask me why but that game is like catnip to girls and plays nicely on those old 733MHz boxes. When I went back last year to do an upgrade on his office den PC she just waved me towards the back while she sat on the couch with AoE playing on the Compaq. When I asked Steve about it he laughed and said I did my job of selling it to her TOO well, as he didn't get to play with it anymore!

But it helped reinforce a valuable lesson told to me by one of my old bosses: Give your customers what THEY need and want, not what you think they would like. Too many of us tech guys try to set up things the way we like them instead of what is good for the customer. And with the females I have found that to be as simple and intuitive as possible. They want to simply pick up the control and know what to do without having the man tell them how to work it. Give them that and your female customers will be happy little campers and recommend you to all their friends. My last boss would get SO pissed when a pretty girl would come in and he would start trying to help them only to get "That's nice, but my (insert sister/cousin/aunt/best friend) said I should get the big hairy biker guy in the back to do it. Is he around?". And it was all because I did everything I could to make it so they pushed the button and it went, period.

Well I can't really tell you about the Atom since I tend to "Frankenstein" everything and I managed to snag a little Sempron board that fit into the HTPC which I later sold. The customer is quite happy and uses the tuner to record MP4 which he then offloads onto a USB HDD for later burning. I tend to build a machine, play with it for awhile, then get bored and sell.

What I can tell you about is capture cards, especially the cheapos as they are verey popular here. Most folks have lots of old VHS tapes with things like weddings, ball games, etc, and while my conversion rates are reasonable if they have a stack of tapes I tell them it is cheaper simply to get a card and DIY. After showing them how easy it is to capture(I usually program 3 settings-low-med-high so they don't need to know things like bitrate) they are quite happy to hand me their money and have me set it up. Since they are mainly converting VHS and watching some cable on it I can't tell you about high def, but the two cards I have had the most good luck with is the Sabrent which is at the top of the list here and the other which can be hard to find is the "easy TV FM".

The nice thing about the Sabrent is it is a Philips chipset, while I believe the Easy TV is a Brooktree. The reason that is important is not only does Mediaportal usually not give you any trouble setting up with these common chipsets, but that you can find tons of free programs in both Linux and Windows that work well with those chips. That way you can go XP+Mediaportal or Linux with Mythbox, your call. These chips have been out long enough that everyone has drivers for them and both free and commercial software vendors that do capture support those chips. So while I haven't had much luck with KWorld(tend to be buggy) the Sabrents work fine. I also have a couple of customers that use the KWorld USB tuner in their XP laptops and don't seem to have the trouble that the PCI cards do, so if you want to go digital for cheap that might be an option.

IMHO this is one of the side benefits to the changeover to digital. All these analog cards that went for $40-50 are now $15-25, which means that those of us on cable/sat can pick up a card to play with for cheap. So now if I am out of town I can record my shows by simply picking a time and letting the card do the work and at such cheap prices you don't feel heartbroken if the card can't do all that you'd like. That said I record my stuff at 2MBps using the P4 3.6GHz I have had for years and I am very happy with the picture quality. Those whose weddings and kids Bday parties I converted are also very happy to have a nice DVD with their memories backed up safely and easily copied than to worry about tape wear and breakage. So pick you out a little card, Frankenstein you a machine together(for watching anything over 500MHz works fine, for recording I recommend a 1.5GHz or better depending on the format) and most importantly have fun! After all what fun is a new toy, even a cheapo toy, if you don't play with it?

Here or here or here if you want an older All-In-Wonder with S video. There are plenty of choices right now in the $15-$20 range and most have nice features like remotes and MP4 capture so you can take your time and get the features that interest you. I just checked and I'm afraid the place where I picked up a couple for $5 each has sold out, but the Sabrent and Kworld cards I have placed into customers computers in the past and they are quite happy with them. I myself picked up an "Easy TV FM" for $15 which I watch cable and listen to the radio with.

they are quite fun to play with and you can add Media Portal if you have XP to make a really cheap media center. Some prefer Xbox Media Center for Windows but I've had better luck with Media Portal. Anyway I hope this helps, and have fun!

Have you tried Mediaportal? I have had much better results with it than the XMBC Windows port. Like you I had nothing but trouble with getting MythTV to work,but adding this to a stripped down WinXP box(If you don't want to strip it yourself,and have an XP license,find yourself a copy of "TinyXP Beast Edition". Only uses 64Mb of RAM with full networking capability) and it really runs like a champ. And with the wealth of plugins and extensions you can really make Mediaportal YOUR way,so it has the features that are of most interest to YOU. And of course free is always of the good. try it,I bet you'll like it!

And I switched to the open-source MediaPortal for Windows and haven't looked back since.

Slap it on an old XP machine in a decent media center ATX case, and you have a great media pc. No hassles with linux makes, XP media center BS, or compatibility. Throw in a blowout on an Logitech media center remote package with the Setpoint Uberoptions driver to open up all the button options, and you are set. Just share all your media folders on your home network for any other media you want to show.

If you went windows, then why not mediaportal?

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

I switched from SageTV to it because it kicked SageTV's butt hard.

Now I Use linux plus XBMC. Myth is awesom at Recording. it's is crap at music and media.

What does XBMC give you that Media Portal doesn't? Not trying to flame here,and I can understand how cool XBMC could be if you have an Xbox,but I don't. So does anyone have a list of features and how it compares to Media Portal? Because I have been using Media Portal on XP Pro for awhile and it is rock solid stable and with plugins it supports my games,shows,etc very well. So are there any cool features that make it worth switching for on XP? And as always this is my 02c,YMMV

But the main uses of the 733MHz is to run MS Office 2K for writing invoices in XP,and playing some old DOS/9x games in 98SE. I can assure you that after turning off all the services that I had no use for the little 733MHz purrs like a kitten. I have even had a lady ask me to price her the exact same model due to its small form factor which she says will be perfect for her husband's entertainment center. After showing her the free media center I can add to it she is really jazzed and wants to bring by the money on her next paycheck.

As someone who has been building and working with Windows for over 13 years,I have found the important thing is to know the limits of the hardware. Would I try to use the 733MHz as my main Internet box? No,flash is just too heavy. But my 1.1GHz Celeron has been filling that job for 8 years now with nary a hiccup. And yes I do watch Youtube on it,I simply cut down the amount of tabs when doing so. That dual P3 with a gig of RAM would make a great fileserver or even a nice multimedia box with the right capture card. But if you are trying to use OE or IE then they will simply drag it down. Turn off unnecessary hardware and services,minimize the amount of startup,and I think you'll find that XP Sp2 will run just fine. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

True, but MediaPortal (Open Source DVR) is very international-centric and it ignores it. Another reason why I use it: Not necessarily because its open source, but because its user centric, not corporate centric.

Why not try Mediaportal? It is free,open source and runs really nice on XP. I took an old SFF running XP Pro out of an office upgrade and put media portal on it for my sis. It really is simple and easy. But that is my 02c,YMMV. But I can say it really surprised me how well it worked with the el cheapo brooktree based card I picked up for it.

Absolutely true, and frustratingly so. Although, there are an increasing number of solutions. For the average HTPC that really only has a hard drive and a DVD player as internal power consumers, the PicoPSU works really well. It's utterly tiny, cheap, and fanless. Add to that the fact that 2.5" drives are getting up around the 200GB range commonly, and that laptop DVD drives can be quite easily adapted, and the Mac Mini finally has some reasonable competition.

Now, if there was only a software solution that was a) simple, b) elegant and c) relatively stable, I'd be in heaven. Media Portal is in the neighborhood, but it's starting to develop the endlessly irritating feature bloat that seems to permeate this genre of software for some reason. I don't give a hobo's crap about visualizations, PVR capability or an endless collection of useless plugins that don't work, but I seem to be completely alone in that desire. If I could configure Front Row *at all* it would be the perfect solution... the Leopard version threatens to address this problem, but I guess we'll see. Sadly, Minis ain't as cheap as DIY hardware...

You don't even technically need a fast pipe, if you have plenty of local storage and don't mind queuing things to download in the background. Even a relatively slow DSL connection could grab plenty while you're asleep.

That's why Comcast, RCN, DirecTV, Dish, and anybody else responsible for television distribution would fight this tooth and nail. If TiVo actually even proposed something similar to what I've outlined, I can envision those other companies banding together and creating a cartel similar to the RIAA or MPAA -- maybe the Electronic Media Distributors Association of America, or something of that sort.

In any case, something similar can be accomplished with MediaPortal (or MythTV, or any other media gateway program you desire), Azureus (or another BT client), and ted, the torrent episode downloader. Problem is, that method, while free, is basically illegal right now. If a paid subscription service could let people do it legally, would people pay a monthly fee? I know I would, if I was guaranteed excellent encodes and a huge selection of media. Would everybody pay? Of course not, because some folks will always freeload even if there's a convenient and reasonable alternative. But I think enough people would see the usefulness of the service to pony up the dough.

The trick would be for TiVo to convince the networks that it is in their best interest to partner with them, which means the networks would have to get revenue comparable to the advertising fees and kickbacks from the cable/satellite companies that carry them. That means TiVo would have to pass those costs on to their subscribers, which means they would need enough subscribers to make the per-household cost feasible. Chicken-and-egg scenario... TiVo would need some sort of VC funding or loan to get such a project off the ground, and the way the markets seem to be headed I doubt that's very likely in the near future.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ if you like win32. You need a card with the mpeg decoder on board.

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html if you like linux. Cheap pci cards/usbpvr2 work great.

I've configured both knoppmyth http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html and mediaportal for win32 http://www.team-mediaportal.com/.

Each has their caveats. Knoppmyth works better once you get it rolling, but there's lots of fiddly work to get it going. Lots of fiddly work. Once it's up its rock steady. It manages powering down/sleeping between scheduled shows much better than win32.

MediaPortal is easier to set up. Buggy interface though. Not show-stoppers but whacky things that make it hard to use. For reasons I haven't investigated it uses some kind of proprietary file type to store the shows. If someone knows how to set it up to make an mpeg that would be great. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

I've configured both knoppmyth http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html and mediaportal for win32 http://www.team-mediaportal.com/.

Each has their caveats. Knoppmyth works better once you get it rolling, but there's lots of fiddly work to get it going. Lots of fiddly work. Once it's up its rock steady. It manages powering down/sleeping between scheduled shows much better than win32.

MediaPortal is easier to set up. Buggy interface though. Not show-stoppers but whacky things that make it hard to use. For reasons I haven't investigated it uses some kind of proprietary file type to store the shows. If someone knows how to set it up to make an mpeg that would be great. http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

If you want the ease of use of MCE and don't want the fiddlyness of MythTV.

Try the open source Mediaportal: http://team-mediaportal.com/

They're certainly doing some interesting things over there and they are always open to suggestions/improvements.

By all accounts, MediaPortal is also a very nice, free PVR package for Windows.

How is being locked into wmv different to being locked into the iTunes formats?

Basically neither of these do what I want, which is just to play any video format I want with a nice interface on my TV, hence I use MediaPortal, nice, easy to setup Open Source media software... A+ from me.

Frankly, MediaPortal and the new Vista MCE are heads and shoulders about the rest and have the added benefit of being able to use Windows drivers which means everything on the planet is and will be supported.

Just yesterday it took a half an hour to get a mainstream quickcam out of the box and showing video. iSight? No longer than it takes to launch the app than needs it.

Last time I hooked up an ass-brand webcam it just worked. I did have to install the driver of course but it worked fine in less than three minutes, let alone thirty. Also, you are comparing a camera sold by the OS manufacturer to a third party device. This is not a direct comparison.

Use a thumb drive on a Windows PC. As in, go hunt for it once you plug it in - then use it.

This is pure FUD. When I plug in a USB mass storage device, Windows scans its contents and pops up a window asking me what I would like to do with the drive based on the type of content stored on it. Meanwhile, the "Macintosh HD" icon on the Dual G5 2 GHz running OSX 10.3 to the right of me wanders around my desktop, and I have to go looking for it after each reboot. Windows is clearly superior here.

Picasa vs. iPhoto. No contest.

I despise both, personally, and use neither. I find that intelligently categorizing my images and then just using XP's thumbnail and filmstrip views is superior to basically any other interface I've yet used. I would like to have free tagging, but my solution to that is to use drupal to maintain my photo library (which I'm working on... but I'm short on disk space. got to buy more.) This, anyway, is a matter of opinion.

Add a printer? 90% of them work in OSX with included drivers.

Ditto for Windows. And?

Need to do something tough in networking? Go buy another version of Windows.

What? Speak in specifics or go home. Thanks for the additional helping of FUD though.

Need to be a media center? Goi buy another version of Windows.

Okay, you have officially branded yourself an idiot. There are several free media center programs for windows. For example, you could use MediaPortal.

There's more but I have to get to work...

That's okay, we've had enough of your ignorance and FUD for one day.

"I would have loved to have the OSS solution in place. And in the future, when I would really want some of the MythTV-only features (like one machine doing the recording/storage, and as many front-end devices as I'd like) I'll probably come back and take another look at it."

You might consider taking a look at mediaportal (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/). It is OSS, easy to set up and use, has an active development team, and shortly will be on par with myth-tv's client-server design with the next version. The main drawback is that you would still have to run windows.

there is media portal.

Ah yes, and then I can spend hours trying to get the poorly documented and kludgy installation procedure working, and when I'm done, I can have an ugly and user-unfriendly interface to work with! Yay!

Or I could use MediaPortal and skip all that crap.

In a story about this, there will inevitably be the horde of comments about people setting up their own HTPCs using MythTV. I gave MythTV a shot, and was for the most part unimpressed with its appearance; despite being powerful, the fonts remained ugly, misaligned, and improperly cropped no matter what I did. In addition, installation and configuration (while having improved significantly over time) is still a pain, unless you use a pre-rolled distro like KnoppMyth, in which case you sacrifice customizability for ease of installation.

For those of you who want an alternative, I'd like to recommend MediaPortal, which is partially based off the old XBox Media Center code. I'll readily admit that it is not as efficient as MythTV -- it doesn't have the frontend/backend model that Myth does (although that is being developed), and it requires WinXP with the .NET framework. But it is also fully open-source, has an active development team, and -- most importantly -- is easy to install and use and looks really nice on my television. I haven't used its PVR capabilities much, but it works like a dream for playing our MP3s and digital video, and acts as a very capable emulator frontend as well.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

You can use Media Portal if you're on XP, or Knoppmyth if you want a completely different OS.

Nope all those wars lost.

IpTV will be the solution. I watch 5 ipTV rss feeds now at home reducing my "leeching" of broadcast content at a friends home significantly. (Please Comedy Central, put the Colbert Report and the Daily Show online with a RSS feed!) Channel Federator absolutely rocks and is addictive as hell, dl.tv is my ZDTV fix, and on and on. If you like linux build a set top box with a HTPC case that looks like a piece of video gear for less than $300.00 and use mythtv, it you are a windows nut buy the same hardware and use XP Pro + MediaPortal Both kick the ever living crap out of the really lame XP media Center 2005 and use less resources so you dont have to buy a monster machine.

you get DVI out that most good plasmas and lcds support, and if you dont DVI->HDMI converters cost almost nothing.

Why wait around for them to figure it out for you? do it your self. Being PC based you can use these "anything" drives and play all formats (in linux after some tweaking to get rid of the "protection", in windows with the player app installed)

I dropped cable and my TV program quality improved.

My media player runs windows... it's an Xbox, running XBMC on top of the inbuilt OS, which is what, Windows 9x embedded or something? Or did it end up being NT embedded? I always forget, because it makes no difference to me anwyay :)

You could also use MediaPortal on top of whatever Windows. I hear it's quite good, but I haven't tried it.

The software sucks

You are absolutely right. I have tried meedio in the past and wasnt impressed. I ended up uninstalling it in a couple of days. I finally settled with http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ which is much better in terms of usabilty and features. Also it is opensource

If you want freeview going through a pc (the DIY part) then get a freeview pci card or usb box and plug it in. You can use Myth on Linux, or various solutions on Windows XP such MS Media centre, Media Portal, (I was going to add Meedio, but it seems they've been bought out by Yahoo), Snapstreams "Beyond TV".

If you're on linux, then you could use the Hardware compatibility list at LinuxQuestions to help in choosing a card.

There is a nice selection of DVB-T cards available at DVBSHOP in Germany, which I have used, and they are pretty good with quick orders. They also sell Common Interfaces for some of the DVB-T cards so you can add a TopUp TV CAM and smart card and get subscriber stuff.

Ok, so you have to build the box yourself, but that's DIY for ya !

If you can be bothered, here's a list of my media centre related bookmarks -

Bookmarks

media centre

Give up on MCE and run MediaPortal, which is basically Xbox Media Center for Windows. (Go to sourceforge to download it without beating up their likely-anemic webserver.) I just downloaded and installed it so I could actually give some useful information - I use an Xbox as my media center, so I run XBMC. It's true that the fan is way noisy but the video output is very high quality if you are still on an old school video output device, as I am.

The install is done through a Windows Installer file with a .exe stub which I ignored. There is a configuration utility that [optionally] scans for your files, sets up weather and TV listings, and remote control configuration. (It supports four remotes, forget which now, but Hauppage is one of 'em.)

I made a quick run of the program just now and it seems to work. So, go get it, and forget about MCE.

Try http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ Runs windows and is open source

I recently downloaded and tried out MediaPortal (open source) and I have to say, it's the best I've seen. It scans your collection and downloads plots, actors, box pictures etc from IMDB so you can see everything about a movie. It plays TV/radio with a TV tuner card, has plugins, looks great and is overall fantastic.

I had a bit of a problem controlling it because my remote was sluggish, but I found Bluetooth Remote Control (trial version) on a website yesterday and now I control it from my Bluetooth mobile and it's as if I'm using a keyboard. Even just for the "wow" factor, it's great.