I had ONE problem, which Hauppauge took 3 weeks to respond to, and then didn't fix. Lots of weeks), nor their responsiveness to suggestions, bug reports or cry-for-help style issues. Stop! You would not believe the rate at which this group of volunteer coders fix and bugs (mine hasn't crashed or misbehaved in weeks. Now, Media Portal is in beta, which might put off some people. It offers all the usual 'Give me my 100 most played songs', 'show by album cover','By artist' style options, and allows you to customise icon size, scroll speed, etc.Īnd then, it adds the bonus of radio and internet radio stations, selectable news coverage (choose your own), detailed weather information, launch other progams and games, control the current selection of music via your PDA (Wireless Control!), fully skinnable layout (and some are just beautiful, as well as functional) and fully upgradable via plug ins.

Then, I can stream my audio and video collection from my other gaming/play PCs, while slide-showing (is that a verb?) my recent photographs from the study PC (using smooth transitions and optional Ken Burns fades). To summarise it's main features, I watch cable TV, complete with on-the-box channel changing, pause live TV as with Sky +, have an excellent and detailed Electronic Program Guide (EPG) that beats all other Vendor supplied EPGs (and switches on the PC, updates itself during the night and switches off again if need be), can pre-select to record programs (to hard drive) or simply hit the record button when I'm tired and ask it to stop when the current progam is complete (and switch off), then pop in later, cut out ads, and dump the lot to DVD. I tried a few HTPC packages (Home Theatre PC) and rapidly found that Media Portal wins hands down on all fronts, surpassing ALL commercial packages.

I recently bought a high end PC for the express purpose of providing music, video, dvd, and wireless gaming for my family living area.

I cannot recommend this software (nor it's web site and forum users) highly enough.

Mediaportal