Media Portal home theater PC app for Windows hits 1.0

Filed under: Audio, Video, Windows, Open Source

Media Portal home theater PC app for Windows hits 1.0

by Brad Linder Dec 24th 2008

Open Source media center application Media Portal has been under development for 5 years. And this week the developers decided the product was stable enough to remove the beta label and launch Media Portal 1.0.

The application was initially based on the popular XBMC application designed to turn Xbox gaming consoles into media playback workhorses. But Media Portal quickly outgrew its beginnings as a Windows port of XBMC. Version 1.0 is a full featured application for accessing music, movies, pictures, weather, and other information from a full screen interface. If you have a TV tuner in your computer you can also use Media Portal to watch and record live TV.

I just installed Media Portal 1.0 on my netbook, and aside from the fact that I had to download and install Microsoft's .NET framework first, the process was pretty much a breeze. There's a one-click install option that lets you select common settings. Or more advanced users can configure the application to their heart's content.

The team is now turning its attention to Media Portal 2, which will be more modular and will may eventually incorporate new capabilities like the ability to stream media across a home network or over the internet to portable devices like cellphones. In the short run, Media Portal 2 will feature mostly backend improvements designed to make it easier to customize the application.

[via Geek Tonic]

Tags: htpc, media-center, media-portal, media-portal-1.0, xbmc

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Fred Thompson said 10:23PM on 12-24-2008

Uh...why would anyone want this when there is a Windows version of XBMC which already does the streaming which is planned for Media Portal 2.0 and a lot of other things? Media Portal WAS better than XBMC...a couple of years ago...

shaft0 said 1:47PM on 1-12-2009

The only real advantage to using Media Portal vs (the much superior) XBMC would be the ability to record TV.

Other than that, though, Media Portal doesn't hold a candle to XBMC.

Eric Vasin said 4:56PM on 12-27-2008

In terms of the amount of customizations you can make, I'd say Mediaportal FTW.
Easily one of the best pieces of software you can find...

Fred Thompson said 8:36PM on 1-01-2009

Media Portal seemed to have a lot more negative comments when compared to XBMC a while ago. I personally don't which is more capable, I just want to use the one which IS more capable. Skinning isn't critical ot me, just a nicety. Are you familiar with both enough to be confident with your recommendation? Is there a seamless integration with SubSonic for audio with either? What about shelling to other applications such as game console emulators?

wolfsvein75 said 12:04AM on 12-29-2008

Why use either of those when you can use linksys nslu2 that has been unsluged with Media Tomb on it and it can stream movies anything across the network without having to have your computer on at all and the nlsu2 unit only uses 10 watts of power.... >:P

Fred Thompson said 8:36PM on 1-01-2009

Two reasons:

1) Linksys discontinued manufacturing the nslu2 in 2008.

2) MediaTomb is only a streaming file server, not a playback application.

Eric H said 11:34AM on 1-05-2009

I prefer Media Portal due to the available plugins and skins. MP with the Streamed MP skin (I know is a port of an XBMC skin) with the Moving Pictures Plugin for movies and the MyTV Series plugin for my tv shows, I am much happier than I was with XBMC for windows.

Tom Young said 12:47PM on 1-30-2009

I reluctantly moved to Media Portal from xbmc. I still have xmbc running on an original xbox, the home theater pc and my laptop. XBMC has a more polished interface and easier configuration and wins in just about any comparison with Media Portal except Media Portal does a few crucial things that XBMC doesn't do. Thus I switched.

1) Media Portal can do hardware video decoding. XBMC relies on the processor and unless you have an $$$ quad core cpu then you have a real problem with 1080p and 720p signals. Plus offloading to the video card has additional advantages.

2) XBMC still has real problems with digital audio. It's not a pleasure setting up in Media Portal either but it can do it.

3) I don't do this but you can use Media Portal to watch and record live TV.

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