So what do people do when microsoft tries to charge you a few extra bucks for the media center software? Well, people make an alternative thenselves and distribute it for free. That is how you kick Microsoft’s ass. As usual I was running through several software that allow all the media center features into one package and above which is free. Hit upon this amazing thing called Media portal which gives it all for free.

official download site: http://www.team-mediaportal.com

MediaPortal Features

GeneralMediaportal-Homescreen

  • Create your own skins, or choose one of the available skins!
  • MediaPortal can easily be extended with extra plugins
  • You decide which keys you want to use for which actions
  • Internal support for several remote control (streamzap, MCE, redeye, winlirc, hauppauge, FireDTV)
  • Windowed and fullscreen support

My TVMediaPortal TV

  • Supports analog TV, DVB-C, DVB-T, DVB-S and ATSC
  • HDTV and AC3 support
  • Support for multiple tuners
  • Record, watch, and timeshift Live TV
  • Advanced recording scheduler:
    - Record once
    - Record now
    - Daily o Weekly
    - Weekdays (Mon-Fri)
    - Every time a program appears on this TV channel
  • Timeshifting,Watch, Pause, Rewind, FF, RW Live TV
  • Advanced recording management:
    - Handle conflicts
    - Set recording priorities
    - Quality settings / recording
    - Transcode to WMD, XVID or MPG
    - Diskmanagement auto deletes old and/or watched recordings
  • TVGuide:
    - Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB
    - Supports XMLTV
    - Colors for genres
  • TV Guide search
  • TV Channel grouping
  • Supports over > 10000 channels
  • Auto channel tuning
  • Normal OSD (On Screen Display during movies/tv)
  • Special ZAP OSD (Shows description of what is playing currently on TV)
  • Support for Teletext
  • Standby control to put your HTPC sleeping. It will awake when there a recording needs to start

My Video / MyDVDMediaPortal Video/DVD

  • Play any movie your PC has a codec for (divx, mpeg, matroska,…)
  • All your movies will be stored in MediaPortal’s video database
  • View your movies by actors, genres, year, title
  • Sort your movies by actors, genres, year, rating
  • Automatically retrieves video art & info from IMDB
  • Stacking/unstacking if your movie consists of multiple files
  • Internal DVD player with menu’s (you can also use an external DVD player)
  • On Screen Display (OSD) for: Pause, Rewind, FastForward, Stop, Mute, Bookmarks, Switching Audio Streams/Subtitle languages…
  • Resume from playback on next play

My Pictures mediaportal-pictures

  • Watch your pictures/photos
  • Slideshow support with nice transitions
  • Zoom in/out, rotate pictures (rotation is remembered next time)
  • Pause, previous/next picture
  • Delete picture(s)
  • Background music, either songs from my music, or radio from my radio
  • Auto thumbnail generation
  • Sort in Name, Date, Size
  • View in List, Icon or Big Icon display
  • Ken Burns effect slideshow
  • Filmstrip view

My Music mediaportal-music

  • View your music by artists, albums, genres, top100 or plain songs
  • Sort your music in many ways like tracks, genre, filesize, artists, album,…
  • Use visualisations from Windows ?Media Player 10
  • Load, create & save playlists (.m3u, .pls, .b4u)
  • Automaticlly gets album art & info for all your albums
  • Automaticlly gets artist art & info for all your artists
  • View by list, icons, and big icons
  • Shuffle, repeat, FF, RW, pause,…
  • Music ratings
  • Favorites
  • Party shuffle mode
  • Search music for specific songs
  • Display all your favorite songs in one screen
  • Utilize Winamp, Foobar or iTunes plugins for music playback

My Radio mediaportal-radio

  • Listen to your favorite radio stations (FM, DVB or internet stream)
  • Auto tuning (FM)
  • Logo’s for each radio station (manual process)
  • Supply a friendly name for each radio station
  • Internet radio station streaming (ASX or Shoutcast)
  • Support for external radio tuner applications
  • Auto start listening to your selected radio station when MediaPortal starts

My weather mediaportal-weather

  • Show the latest weather information
  • Support for multiple cities
  • Current temperature, 3 Day Forecast
  • Temperature (in degrees C/F)
  • UV Index, Humity (%), Wind (mph/kph), etc
  • Support for live images from internet, like:
    - Satellite images
    - Temperature images
    - UV Index images
    - Winds images
    - Humidity images
    - Precipitation images

More features! mediaportal-games

  • Launching external programs like:
    - Games
    - Emulators
    - Email application
    - Internet Browser
    - IRC client
  • Burner let’s you burn all type of files and folders directly to CD/DVD from within the MediaPortal interface
  • Showing RSS news feeds
  • Read and send mail within MediaPortal
  • Monitor computer hardware:
    - CPU temperature
    - Motherboard Temperature
    - Hard disk Temperature
    - Used Memory
    - Used Virtual Memory
    - etc
  • Allow the PC automatically go to standby/hibernation and wakes it when there is a scheduled recording! Just like a real VCR!
  • Has different alarm features
  • You can even play included games like Tetris or Sudoku!
This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 5:05 pm.
Categories: Computing Tips, Gadgets, Google, Technology, Windows.

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