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Open Source Multimedia Center For Windows

Posted by timothy on from the not-if-your-windows-are-managed-by-fluxbox dept.

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."

7 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. media portal page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    don't link the home page or anything
    http://mediaportal.sourceforge.net/

  2. Re:erm, not 1.0? by Suddenly_Dead · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the homepage:

    There are some rumors floating around about MediaPortal 1.0.

    However this is very wrong, because as you can see below we just released 0.1. The current version 0.1 is not considered as the first stable release and it is definitely not final!

    This does not mean the product is an alpha release! The 0.1 is considered a very nice and stable beta release, which everyone can and should test and help out to fix bugs and/or improve the product even further. And remember: it is free forever!

  3. Re:Open Source for Windows ? by nosaj72 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been running this for a while. It just runs on regular Windows, not the XBOX. It is just a port of the XBOX Media Program. Not bad for keeping a nice queue of DIVX movies at the ready for the kids.

  4. The server's already running slow... by rjelks · · Score: 4, Informative

    The project is at SourceForge if you guys want to give maxconsole a break.

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  5. Slightly on-topic... by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just got my Xbox modded yesterday, and it included the excellent XBMC. Only problem is upgrading it. My version is a few months behind, and you cannot download binaries from Sourceforge, because the project must be compiled with Microsoft's dev kit for the Xbox, and XBMC is an unlicensed project. I still have not figured out how to get binaries!

    This project is compiled with Vanilla .NET, I tried running it on my PC before modding my Xbox and it crashed every time I tried to do anything, I might download and try again.

    Although modding an Xbox isn't for the faint of heart (I just had someone else do it), it's fun and the software you get is very powerful. I was up and running with MP3's burnt on a DVD-R and some Divx TV shows. By the way, you can make XBMC be the default program when you boot the Xbox, if thats all you want to use your console for.

    1. Re:Slightly on-topic... by Vaevictis666 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Xbins runs an FTP that you can download latest XBMC from, join #xbins on efnet. Otherwise, try looking for a torrent of it (there's usually a weekly one on suprnova)

  6. Media Portal is nowhere near prime-time by brunes69 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I tried this software a few months back, and I must say, while I was comparing it to an already mature piece of software (MythTV), it was certainly not up to snuff. It was incredibly slow to launch from my standpoint (this was on an Athlon 2400XP ), took over 20 seconds for the GUI to launch - probably due to it being in .Net. After launch, only a few functions were usable, and the system frequently crashed.

    On the whole - if you are looking for some free PVR software NOW, get MythTV or Freevo. There are excellent tutorials on the net on how to set up a MythTV system - from scratch - no hardcore Linux skills required.