Everything that microsoft media center should of been

[Stryker]

Not sure where to put this, but it does turn any pc into a very stylish gadget worthy in any lounge.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Its a freeware media center.  Given the number of people working on it, it has a very bright future ahead of it.  I've been running it a few weeks now (on a dedicated pc) and must admit now I've got used to it, it is incredibly useable.  Its worth adding a few plugins, such as integrated internet streamed music videos and movie trailers.

It has many features such as if you rip your DVDs to ISO images on the hard drive it will auto mount them when you play them.... also getting the cover art and plot ratings of imdb is really cool... along with sorting your vids by internet ranking!

The only downside is the rather messy documentation.  It really pays off to read the forums as many of the coolest features are hidden away and undocumented.... except for a few mentions in the forums.

Enjoy.

[DuVeL]

Lol, just after I have my Shuttle for 2 months or so...
1 Thing though, this might be very interesting for people who want to make their own MediaCenter (da_ricci should check this thread!).
 
Good find Stryker!

[suicidal_monkey]

there's also MythTV http://mythtv.org/ which tomshardware seemed to like...

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/15/mythtv_uk/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/09/08/the_mythtv_convergence_uk/

[Stryker]

Yeah, looked at that.  Thing is I think team media portal is a more all encompassing media solution though.

[suicidal_monkey]

actually it's more a do you want to use windows as the underlying system or not question... whether you intend the unit to do more than act as a media centre or not?

Mediaportal runs on top of windows as I understand it, while MythTV can be set up so that the pc is literally just a media-machine, hopefully booting quicker and having much lower hardware requirements ... no OS license fee to worry about either. I got a free media application thingy with the remote control system that came with my case, not really sure about it though.