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Anonymous

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I have been searching and trying various HTPC software solutions for a couple of months now - both pay and open source (MythPC, MP, Showshifter, Meedio, etc).

One thing I have noticed is that on the open source solutions, the support is one heck of a lot better and fixes are much quicker that the pay versions.

MP is now the only HTPC software I use, and I wish to that the author(s) and the community for this, now off go for the paypal a donation. . . . .
 

MrMario64

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  • April 22, 2004
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    thank you,
    We all do our best.

    yeah, I also do not understand why commercial programs have such long roads to a new bugfix release.
    I asked this on the meedio forums to and well, they did not agree with me.
    Got something with redhat smacked back @ me.

    Anyway, we don't like this same approuch and tend to update regularly.
    You can ofcourse always have the lates release when you compile yourself.
    There r free solutions for this.

    Keep enjoying MP and hope you will help users out here to.
    As we are all here with a common goal (I hope)

    Enjoy.
     

    Messiah

    Portal Member
    August 30, 2004
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    I've been working along with many software projects, both commersial and open source and I can tell you that there are different forces that drives the development and open source projects is most often a lot more active. However, open source projects has rather high thresholds to overcome to be succesfull. A HTPC is a rather simple solution were you can create a product without lots of resources to start with. As the project becomes known others will join and success is created. Much like MP.

    But if you look att more complex solutions, like a office solution like OpenOffice its really really hard to succed as the thresholds are so high at the user end. I'm sure OpenOffice will beat MSOffice, but I'm not sure when.

    Commersial companies often tell negative stories about open source and relate to, that its all about "free software" as in free beer. Users won't choose the solution if they would have to pay for it. But, if you take a closer look into successprojects, its more about the solutions itself. The developers most often do not alike the idea of having a commersial software in the middle of something that have great oppertunities and/or is widely used by the masses. The main reason is because there must be openings for everybody to join the development.

    I predict that MP is "the one" solution that will drive the HTPC to the masses. And will most probably stay there for 2-3 year. And it has the possibilities to set usage standards for our new way of living with media at home. And the main threat isn't products like Meedio, Sage or other commersial HTPC's. No they will be small sidetracks in a few months.

    The biggest threat or as I would say, the future is to port MP over to Linux and take the real match against MythTV and Freevo. Even if they are not the present threat, they will be when the masses has HTPC's at home. Because then the Windows OS only will be seen as a unwanted cost. This also include rolling out Linux to the masses, which is the hard part for MythTV and Freevo today. Simulair to OpenOffice.

    MP is superb and thanks to initiators MrMario64 and Frodo, we can all take part in setting the standards on how media will work at home in the future... They sure are worth donations!

    8) \Mess
     

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