Media center freeware?

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
My wife and I recently moved in to a new apartment and I hooked up my desktop computer next to the entertainment center in the living room. I want to use it as a media center PC, but need a media center program to make that happen.

Can anyone recommend a free or very cheap media center application for my purposes?

I should also mention that I have a Streamzap Remote; my wife gave it to me as a gift a few years ago.

EDIT: A quick Google search turned up SesamTV. What do you all think?
 
Last edited:
SesamTV was last updated in 2006, so that's a no-go.

I like the look of MediaPortal, though. Most importantly, it's open source!
 
I installed and configured MediaPortal, but my Streamzap PC Remote doesn't work very well with it--which stinks, because I really like the look, feel, and features of MediaPortal.

I've sent an e-mail to Streamzap support, but does anyone else have other suggestions for media center freeware?

I took a quick look at GB-PVR, but that seemed to be geared toward recording TV (which I'm not interested in because I don't have a TV tuner card).
 
Tek7 said:
I installed and configured MediaPortal, but my Streamzap PC Remote doesn't work very well with it--which stinks, because I really like the look, feel, and features of MediaPortal.

I've sent an e-mail to Streamzap support, but does anyone else have other suggestions for media center freeware?

I took a quick look at GB-PVR, but that seemed to be geared toward recording TV (which I'm not interested in because I don't have a TV tuner card).
Click to expand...

it is geared that way but works for everything else too
 
Tek7 said:
I took a quick look at GB-PVR, but that seemed to be geared toward recording TV (which I'm not interested in because I don't have a TV tuner card).
Click to expand...

pfft, who needs a pretty gui?

I just used the command line when I had my Hauppage installed (i only have 1 PCI slot on my current setup so I don't use it)

tune to channel 27: ivtv-tune -c 27
record video: cat /dev/video0 > mediafile.avi
watch tv: mplayer /dev/video0

(sorry, I couldn't help that)
 
not all of vista though, in business editions it is fully absent.
 
wonder why? ;)

better to wait for w7 to upgrade anyway for mc functionality...the sweet sweet sound of DirecTV tuners is music to my ears
 
MediaPortal would be perfect for my purposes if only I could get my Streamzap PC Remote to play nicely with it. Right now, I have to wait a few seconds between button presses for MP to respond at all.
 
Tek7 said:
MediaPortal would be perfect for my purposes if only I could get my Streamzap PC Remote to play nicely with it. Right now, I have to wait a few seconds between button presses for MP to respond at all.
Click to expand...
Okay, now that I have MediaPortal working properly with my PC remote (turns out my new rechargeable batteries were already low on juice), I'm loving it. It does exactly what I wanted a media center application to do.
 
Wiki: Windows 7.

From the Wikipedia.com article:
Gates later said that Windows 7 will also focus on performance improvements.
Click to expand...
IF I buy it, and that's a pretty big if, I hope that it can be customized similar to XP so that it can only use ~100mb of ram or less and still be functional for gaming/general usage.

A friend has XP on one of his computers using about 58mb of ram at start-up and his XP laptop, which is very similar to mine, uses about 157mb at start-up.

Vista on my laptop has been customized so that it *only* uses 384mb of ram (which is down from ~800mb of ram usage...craziness :eek:) My laptop can only hold 2gb of ram, and initially it only had ONE gig of ram! 384mb at start-up is as good as it gets apparently :(.

If I do buy Windows 7, the upgraded media center would be nice, but definitely not one of the sole reasons for buying the OS.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top