Thinking of trying MP, questions on comparison to MCE and MythTV

[edmicman]

Now that it's summer I'm thinking of re-examining my HTPC setup, and seeing what else is out there and what might be better. Two years ago I had a MythTV setup, which worked per se. But configuration was a PITA, and I never fully got my MCE remote working on it. It's music interface sucked. I used it as a glorified digital VCR / media machine, and recorded analog cable, but mostly would copy downloaded TV episodes and use it that way. I hated the interface, though.

About a year ago I installed a copy of MCE2005, and the interface is awesome. They definitely got that right. It worked out of the box with my MCE remote and PVR500 tuner card. TV recording works, though I still mostly use it as a backup in case I didn't get the torrent of a show downloaded and copied over to a network share. It's music playing interface is better, but the music manage still sucks. Management in general is a complaint. Because it's XP, I can't RDP onto the box without kicking off the "MCE" user, so I can't run windows updates or install other software while it's in use. I installed WebGuide4 to try and get a web interface to manage recordings (which I really liked in MythTV), but it feels slow and buggy. It's still a pain to manage things.

So I'm looking for alternatives, might check out the status of MythTV again, but Media Portal looks very intriguing. I'm wondering how some of these things are handled:

Can media portal run on Windows server? I see in the notes this isn't supported, but can it work? I'm thinking Windows Server 2003. I HATE running on XP, for the simple fact that I can't remote desktop into it without having to kill the other logged in session. And I ran into problems with VNC on MCE2005. But VNC doesn't help me if I want to do some maintenance or something, but someone is watching something on the media center. It was nice to be able to SSH into MythTV. So do you think it can work with Windows Server?

How does the TV Guide data work? Do you have to pay like with MythTV? I'm hooking up to basic analog cable, if that helps.

Like I mentioned above, is there a way to set schedule without being at the TV? I.e., some sort of web page interface to manage recordings and whatnot?

Can I export to DVD, or a video CD image or something? Can I create a disk with multiple episodes?

It sounds like the TV-Server backend and MP frontend on the same box is what I want, correct? If I want a single box in the living room to act as a media center and TV recording suite?

Thanks for any info!