Anonymous

Newbie here - I decided in October to build an HTPC. Spent days, researching the hardware and finally made my decision and put it together.

Then, what I thought would be the easiest part, the software - turned out to be the most difficult. I bought XPMCE, thinking it would be a piece of cake - after all, I done tons of installs on MS SQL Server, All the NT variations up to W2k3, Exchange etc etc. Plus the interface had a nice look to it

What a mistake! A product so locked down, that I might have well had an embedded "CE" os! Couldn't even join a domain!!

Then, went through all the trials of the others, meedio, sage, btv,etc - a lot better, but still I did not have the ability to customize.

Then I loaded MediaPortal - spent hours here on the forum, reading reading, reading and reading!

Bottom line - I spent about 2 hours, configured MediaPortal - learned how to configure xmltv, catalog my music, play my Divx, load a virtual CDrom, and the weather - (Was surprised when I went to Sat view, how close Massachusetts is to Stuttgart-LOL).

This is what open source is all about, volunteers helping us newbies and the wife is thrilled too! Yes, I do have some refinements to do, which Codec is better for what etc and refining my Niveus Remote

Thanks to you all! :mrgreen:
ChuckInMass


Intel 365perl
p4 3.0
1 gb ddr 400
AIW 9800 pro
PVR 250
Silverstone 360 psu
Lascala LC03
250GB SATA (media)
60 GB (OS and Apps)
Prodigy 7.1