Poll: What media center software do you use? Vote for MediaPortal! (1 Viewer)

[capitalf]

Just to clarify.. All of the traffic from the poll itself are from forums like this and Twitter.

The HTPC Blog isn't just about Boxee and XBMC. The posts were solely based on my personal usage at the time of writing. My focus and time available has broadened so I've been testing out different products to write about. I hoped this poll (both the results and the journey) would help me prioritize some things.

You're definitely correct that no one should take this poll seriously in terms of interpreting this as popularity or most users. This was definitely not meant to be market research or crown the "top dog" of media centers. Is it missing info that would be important to other people? Sure! However, for me it fulfills it's purpose.

This poll is basically like of a shoe blogger asking "What brands of shoes do you wear" in Nike, Rebook, Dockers etc forums. To the blogger it just gives them a slight insight on what to write more or less about depending on his goal. To a Dockers forum admin or marketing employee, they might want the results segmented by shoe type, function, etc. This is no doubt useful and better info overall but not 100% necessary for the blogger. So as you said, that's when the company needs to do more detailed market research.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

That's the problem with the likes of Twitter, it spread's to much "NO" information for people to jump on the bandwagon and don't they just love gossip and speculation

Having a 18 year old daughter with all her mates helps give me these opinions

 

[Dadeo]

Hi capitalf - nice explanation about the purpose of your poll, and useful to know. When you are linking direct from a forum to a poll, that context is not always obvious. But I think your explanation makes it very clear. Thanks.

I am happy to see a quality site trying to tackle the issues of HTPCs. If you are looking for good content to write, I have been unable to find a decent comparison of HTPC software anywhere. There are bits and pieces here and there, but nothing even close to comprehensive. I have not found any 'recognized' benchmark tests for HTPC/ media center software. There is very little written about performance, quality of playback, resources required etc. A feature comparison should be 'doable', and a nice overview for new HTPC users; but, most feature comparisons I have read are very superficial.

So if you do find/write anything like that please let me know.

 

[capitalf]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm all about comparisons.. good idea. FLOSS comparison is a pretty good one, but captured nothing in terms of performance... And it's clearly outdated.

Something like this would be a good foundation to build off of and regularly update.

If you have any other suggestions on what data you would like to see gathered let me know. I'll share a list of items/criteria before doing any major work.

 

[Dadeo]

Hey capitalf, thanks for that link to the FLOSS comparison! Yes, that is pretty close to what I meant. I remember seeing the link, but disregarded it as the data is over two years old. However, I would agree that would be a good foundation to build on. I think there was a bit of over emphasis on Linux solutions. The All-in-One solutions are all Linux OS I believe. However, that is only fair since they are FLOSS after all!

The comparison lacked in technical depth. That is not meant as a criticism, as they did better than anyone else has imo. It is just something that can be improved. For example, even in Audio playback, I am not sure if the average new user realizes the difference in quality between a media center that simply supports MP3 playback or one which offers FLAC, AAC, not to mention options like setting output levels, fading tracks in and out, crossover, gapless playback, up-mixing stereo to 5.1 or 7.1 and setting buffer size; DSP (Digital Signal Processing) and FX options for Gain and Compression. Of course, MP offers all the above as well as the ability to incorporate Winamp and VST plugins.

There can also be a huge variation on the level of visualization support. So it is not really enough to just say a media center supports a feature, such as visualizations.

Plus, for software that runs on more than one OS, the level of support for a feature can vary on each OS. So it's not an easy job to tackle! I wish you luck, and if I can help you in any way, feel free to send me a Private Message.

The good news is, you could easily do a series of comparison articles - one on each feature 'area' - like Music, TV, Video, Pictures, Radio, Weather, etc., and an overview. Content galore!