What Media Center would best suit me? (1 Viewer)

[guyver_dio]

Hey guys,

I've just completed my htpc build specs below:

- CASE+accessories: Antec Fusion Remote Black (soundgraph lcd display and RM200 remote)
- MOBO: Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H H55
- CPU: Intel Core i3 530
- RAM: G.Skill 2x2GB DDR3
- HDD: 1xWD 500GB, 1xWD 1.5TB
- Drive: Samsung SH-B083A Blu-Ray

The case came with the Imon manager for remote control button assignment and detection and iMEDIAN HD (which is just trash in my opinion).

The two free media centers I'm looking at are XBMC and Mediaportal.

My main uses would be:
- Accessing media off my hard drives (e.g. stored movies, music, photos etc..)
- Playing dvd's (blu-ray would be a bonus though)

I don't need tv or want anything like news feeds or any other type of feeds.

My main concern is getting it to work with the Imon manager and the RM200 remote. I installed XBMC last night and could not get the remote to work (remote works in iMEDIAN and in windows itself though). After seeing the default button assignments were not registering in XBMC, I added XBMC as a program to Imon manager and tries a few custom assignments for the XBMC specifically (up on the remote registers as keyboard up etc...). Still didn't register anything when I tried the up button in XBMC.

Anyone have any thoughts about which media center is better with general remote assignments or why this might not be working in XBMC? How does mediaportal fair with remote assignments?

Any suggestions or tips someone could give me would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[guyver_dio]

nevermind lol, my remote worked with mediaportal straight after install. Gotta love that!

 

[kiwijunglist]

haha wow, imon remote actually works, are u a holy man?

 

[guyver_dio]

lol haven't got all buttons defined yet, but the crucial buttons for navigation works so that satisfies me for now.

This is my first experience with blu-ray technology and I'm pretty pissed to find that I'll probably have to upgrade to powerDVD 10 so that I won't have any problems playing blu-ray movies. The drive came with powerDVD 8, the day I finished building it I went out and hired 2 blu-ray movies. One required me to download updates before it would play and the other said the software cannot support this disc. Ran the blu-ray advisor that installed with the suit and it couldn't even recognise my cpu, windows 7 or drivers. Downloaded the latest blu-ray advisor and everything passed fine. So I assume I just have to upgrade. Seems pretty useless to have this version of the software bundled with the drive IMO.

But can't just buy any powerdvd 10 version, looks like ultra is the only one that has full blu-ray and hd support. So another 100 bucks so my drive can perform what it was bought for, brilliant. End mini angst rant.