Open Source Multimedia Center For Windows

An anonymous reader writes "A new opensourced multimedia center for Windows has been released. Media Portal boasts the ability to turn your PC into an advanced HTPC (Home-Theatre PC) and PVR/DVR (Personal/Digital Video Recorder). It allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio, watch all your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more. The software is a port of the homebrew Xbox Media Center software which requires a Modded Xbox to run."

Comments

At last!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

finally

Um..

[ackthpt]

It allows you to listen to your favorite music and radio, watch all your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more.

Clearly a threat to Copyrights, Profits and Homeland Security. In certain the authorities (MPAA/RIAA/Microsoft have already been notified and are moving the threat level up from Plaid to Paisley)

The software is a port of the homebrew Xbox Media Center software which requires a Modded Xbox to run."

Now I'm certain Microsoft will be activating their Bucket 'o Lawyers* The only people allowed to give away something like that for free must have an ulterior motive, such as locking everyone into mind control or market share...

*Not to be confused with the toys Bucket o' Soldiers or Barrel o' Monkeys, but toys of their masters all the same.

Re:Um..

[panurge]

Plaid to Paisley? That's worrying. Plaid Cymru just burns down the houses of the English settlers, but the Rev. Ian Paisley shouts stupid things really really loudly.

So where is that on the Fonda-Rumsfeld threat scale?

Does it come with...

[noidentity]

...an extraneous apostrophe remover?

Re:Does it come with...

[Graabein]

While fully realizing that this is Slashdot, and not the New York Times, I'd just like to share the response I got from the Public Editor at the NYT when I complained about their use of apostrophes in headlines like "NEW DVD'S":

Dear Graabein,

Thank you for your message.

I include The Times stylebook entry on this subject below.

Sincerely,
[Name withheld by me]
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times

Also use the apostrophe for plurals formed from letters or numerals (p's and q's; size 7's; B-52's) and terms like PC's, TV's and VCR's. While many authorities prefer to omit the apostrophe in these cases, it is necessary for clarity in all-uppercase headlines. Therefore use it in other kinds of copy also, for consistency.

To which I replied:

I see. I guess I will just have to respectfully disagree with The New York Times stylebook then. I was going to write at length about why, but mercifully (for us all) I remembered this little gem by Dave Barry and decided to include it instead (reproduced here entirely without permission):

Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?

Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S.

Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
--Tips for Writer's

Note the use of all-uppercase and the impression conveyed.

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my email.

Best regards,
Graabein

I never heard back from the Public Editor.

Re:Does it come with...

[jazman]

> I guess I will just have to respectfully disagree...I never heard back

Perhaps he just didn't want to argue the finer points of grammar with someone who likes splitting infinitives.

Re:Hardware

[74nova]

hehe, im presently taking a break from coding in C++ and saw the OO in 'OOMPH' and thought to myself,

'Object Oriented...Multimedia...Player...Hardware?'

huh? ah well. back to coding...

Use Linux for PVR

[bytor4232]

I really should write down a HOWTO on my system at home, cause its soo l33t. I have a basic Athlon based system with a fat HDD, an Happuage WinTV card, and a few scripts I downloaded over the 'net. I use streamer to grab my fav programming, and mencoder to put it into Divx format. I have a record-tv.sh script that runs through Cron for scheduled, and at for one time programming grabs.

I make use of my "grabs" with a Radeon 7000 TV out card patched into my entertainment system. For real l33tness, every night before bed I sync my "vcr" directory to my laptop, and carry my Trek/Spike TV and adult swim with me throughout the day. And if I want to save my TV programming, which I do save alot, a standard CD-R holds 2 hours of Divx in the bitrate I encoded it in, which is a decent bitrate for broadcast. Right now I have about six 50 CD spindles of Spike TV and Adult Swim programming.

Proof that I married the right person: all I have to do is make the ISO's. My wife burns them in her spare time ;) Oh, she cooks, cleans, pays bills, and runs Debian Sid with WindowMaker, and doesn't care when I go out gaming, and hardly spends a dime on non-essential girly stuff. Great in the other "wifely" duties areas too.

I really should write a HOWTO on how I put it together. Its quite cool. On a side note, I should write a HOWTO on how I found the perfect Geek wife.

Re:Use Linux for PVR

[hackstraw]

On a side note, I should write a HOWTO on how I found the perfect Geek wife.

Yes, you should. I havn't heard of an American woman under 40 that cooks, cleans, and pays bills without also being a psycho bitch on the side. If she still does this in 5 years (without bitching)...

Wow. I'm speechless, and thats hard for me to say.

I for one

[uberjoe]

welcome our new open source overlords.

MythTV clone?

[Gothmolly]

What does this do, besides lack any substantial development history, that MythTV doesn't do?

That being said, it seems to be working great on my Xbox, that mighty 733MHz P3 w/no hw MPEG capabi...BUFFERING...

Re:Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I put it on a TIVO?

Re:The server's already running slow...

[Cplus]

Your mother looks like ass in FireFox, however this page looks much the same in IE, FireFox or Mozilla.

Are you happy? I wasted a whole two minutes of my life on this. That's two minutes less that I get to live, it's like you murdered me a little bit with a tiny, little knife.