| He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.Albert Einstein (1875-1955), German-born American theoretical physicist, theories of relativity, philosopher
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| Ozzik: The MediaPortal guide, part I. |
26-1-07 9:49:28 |
To be fair, this guide is taken from the MediaPortal website.
You can read it in their wiki: wiki.team-mediaportal.com/
I just edited it a bit. By the way, while I was writing it, I also installed it on a PC. It wasn't the first time. I've done it once about a year ago. I can only tell you that these guys did a fantastic job and if you think meedio is a bit too complicated for you, you should definitely try this one!
Overview
MediaPortal is anOpen Source application for turning your PC in a very advanced Multi-Media Center / HTPC. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch your video's and DVD's, view, schedule and record live TV and much more.
As Open Source software licensed under the GNU/GPL agreement, you get MediaPortal for free. This also means anyone can contribute to MediaPortal or customize it for their own needs!
MediaPortal is built on the Microsoft .NET framework using C#.
The MediaPortal Environment
General
Create your own skins, or choose one of the available skins!
MediaPortal can easily be extended with extra plugins
You decide which keys you want to use for which actions
Internal support for several remote control (Streamzap, MCE, Red-Eye, WinLIRC, Hauppauge, FireDTV)
My TV
Supports analog TV, DVB-C, DVB-T, DVB-S and ATSC
HDTV and AC3 support
Support for multiple tuners
Record, watch, and timeshift Live TV
Watch, pause, rewind and fast-forward live TV
Advanced recording scheduler:
Record now, once, daily, weekly, on weekdays (Mon-Fri), every time a program appears on this TV channel, or even every time a program appears on any TV channel
Advanced recording management:
Handle conflicts, set recording priorities, quality settings, transcode to WMV, XviD or MPEG, diskmanagement automatically deletes old and/or watched recordings
TV Guide:
Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB, supports XMLTV, colors for genres, search the guide
TV Channel grouping
Supports over 10,000 channels
Automatic channel tuning
Normal OSD (On Screen Display during movies and TV)
Special Zap OSD (Shows description of what is playing currently on TV)
Support for Teletext
Standby control to put your HTPC to sleep. It will awake when there a recording needs to start
My Radio
Listen to your favorite radio stations (FM, DVB or internet streams)
Auto tuning (for FM radio)
Logo's for each radio station (this is a manual process)
Supply a friendly name for each radio station
Receive streamed internet radio stations (ASX and Shoutcast)
Support for external radio tuner applications
Automatically start listening to your selected radio station when MediaPortal starts
My Music
View your music by artist, album, genre, rating or browse the music files
Sort your music in many ways like track, genre, filesize, artist, album, etc.
Use visualizations from Windows Media Player 10 and higher
Load, create & save playlists (.m3u, .pls, .b4u)
Automatically gets pictures and info for all of your artists and albums
View as list, icons or big icons
Shuffle, repeat, fast-forward, rewind, pause, etc.
Music ratings
Favorites
Party shuffle mode
Search music for specific songs
Display all your favorite songs in one screen
Utilize Winamp, Foobar or iTunes plugins for music playback
My Pictures
Watch your pictures and photos
Slideshow support with nice transitions
Zoom in and out, rotate pictures (the rotation is non-permanent, but remembered next time)
Pause, previous/next picture
Delete pictures
Background music, either songs from My Music, or radio from My Radio
Auto thumbnail generation
Sort by name, date or size
View as list, icons, big icons or filmstrip
Ken Burns effect slideshow
My Videos
Play any movie your computer has a codec installed for (DivX, MPEG, Matroska, etc)
All your movies will be stored in MediaPortal's video database
View and sort your movies by title, actors, genre, release year, rating
Automatically retrieves pictures and info from IMDb
Stacking/unstacking if your movie consists of multiple files
Internal DVD player with menu's (you can also use an external DVD playing application)
On Screen Display (OSD) for pause, rewind, fast forward, stop, mute, bookmarks, switching audio streams and subtitle languages
Resume from playback on next play
My Weather
Show the latest weather information
Support for multiple cities
Current temperature, 3-day forecast
Temperature (in °C or °F)
UV index, humity (%), wind-speed (mph/kph), etc
Support for live images from internet, like satellite, temperature, UV index, wind, humidity, precipation
More Features...
Launching external programs like
Games
Emulators
E-mail application
Internet Browser
IRC client
Burner let's you burn all type of files and folders directly to CD/DVD from within the MediaPortal interface
Showing RSS news feeds
Read mail from within MediaPortal
Monitor computer hardware:
CPU temperature
Motherboard Temperature
Hard disk Temperature
Used Memory
Used Virtual Memory
etc.
Allows the PC to automatically go into standby/hibernation and wakes it when there is a scheduled recording, just like a real VCR
Has different alarm features
You can even play Tetris!
Requirements
Software components
Operating System / hotfixes
-Windows XP SP2, with Windows XP you are able to use MediaPortal with one DVB TV card or several analog TV cards, or Windows MCE 2005 RU2, with Windows MCE you are able to use MediaPortal with several DVB TV cards!
-Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 with SP1 and Microsoft .NET Framework 2
-DirectX 9.0c or later
-Windows Media Player version 10 or later
-All Windows updates
-DVB hotfix (if you use a DVB TV card)
-IEEE1394 (Firewire) hotfix (if you upgraded to SP2 and use FireWire devices)
-VMR9 fix: Flickering when you play back interlaced content.
Drivers and Codecs
-Always use the most recent drivers for your video and audio card
-To be able to view QuickTime movies you should install QuickTime Alternative.
-For more playback codecs and filters see AfterDawn. I am not sure if codec packs like K-Lite should be advised, since they tend to destabilize the system.
-VobSub for external subtitle playback (not needed for DVD subtitles)
Hardware:
-CPU: 1.4 GHz or higher
-Memory: 256 MB or more
-HDD: ~200 MB for MediaPortal and ~12 GB for recording and timeshifting TV
-Videocard: DirectX 9 compatible videocard with at least 64 MB of video memory (recommended 128 MB):
* Cards which work:
o ATI Radeon series (9600 and above or X300 and above)
o NVIDIA GeForce, GeForce FX (5200 or above) and !NForce series
o Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (integrated i865G)
o Matrox Parhelia
o SiS Xabre series
-TV card: optional, if you want to watch and record TV with MediaPortal
For an updated list of supported TV cards, see the Supported TV Cards list.
Notes:
MediaPortal currently records live TV in DVR-MS format which generates a file size of approximately 3GB (3072MB) per hour. So a typical 2 hour movie will create a file which is about 6GB (6144MB) in size.
For that reason, a 100GB Hard Disk would give you enough space to record multiple shows over 2 weeks without having to delete or compress them.
1080i (highest resolution) HDTV minimum hardware requirements
* CPU: 2.8 GHz
* Memory: 512 MB
* DirectX9 capable graphics card with at least 128MB of video memory
* HDTV capable playback codecs
Notes:
Before you dive headlong into buying a HDTV tuner card and expect your PC to play it without fault, navigate to this Microsoft media page and download some 1080i and 720p files and see if your video card can handle it. A 100MB download may save you some disappointment.
Now, that your PC has met the requirements (hopefully), let's install the soft. The installation is very simple.
Next: Configuration wizard. |
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