MediaPortal or XBMC (1 Viewer)

[Haligan]

Ok, first I am not trying to start a bad thread.

I have a older computer that I want to make an HTPC out of.

Here are the specs.
AMD Athlon XP 2500 1.8ghz, L-2 512, 333 FSB
Abit VA-20 Motherboard
1 gig PC2700 ram
VisionTek Xtasy 9200se, 128MB DDR
WinFast TV2000 XP Deluxe
Seagate 120gb IDE or WD 80 SATA
Windows XP Pro


I really would like to know which one would run better on the machine. I have a WHS that has all my videos, music and pictures that i will be streaming from. I heard that Mediaportal uses video card for decoding so it does not put so much on the processor.


Any thoughts would be great

 

[pilehave]

Well, if you don't need TV then you're pretty free to choose whatever you want. Why not install both and see which suits your needs better?

I would say that XBMC has an more advanced skinengine (smoother, eyecandy, cowerflow etc.) but MediaPortal has more advanced handling of video and tv-shows from 3.rd party modules (Moving Pictures and TV-Series).

MediaPortal allows using DXVA, don't know if XBMC can do that.

 

[tourettes]

MediaPortal allows using DXVA, don't know if XBMC can do that.

Currently XBMC allows hardware acceleration only on Linux + NVidia combo. Althou 9200 is such old card that it mostlikely wont work nicely with MP (nor with anything else than MPEG2 hardware acceleration). Is it even a full DirectX9 card (if I remember correctly it isn't).

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

As pilehave said you can directly compare the 2, by installing both, neither should conflict with each other

tourettes is correct, 9600 onwards is directx9, so if it does struggle, then that is why

 

[pilehave]

If you really need to use the old hardware, at least consider spending the $50 a modern graphics card can be had for

 

[Haligan]

Ok I have installed MediaPortal with mediastream skin and XBMC with mediastream skin. When I play a movie with MP the cpu usage at 35%-60% and it plays fine. When I play the same movie with XBMC the cpu usage is at 95%-100% and it plays fine also. So I can actually use both. MP seams to use less resources. So I am going to setup the remote and customize the interface a little. Look for plugins for Hulu, NBC, Nation Geo and such.


Video card - I do have another APG video card in my sons desktop. I think it is ATI 256 mb, but will have to look at the numbers. I would love to be able to build a new HTPC but just trying to get it in the den so I can say "look what this can do"......

Thanks for you help and again any suggestions would be great