Software

Most tuner cards come with software that will do everything like recording, timeshifting and whatnot, but they’re really not tailored to a TV based system, and are only good if you want to keep your viewing on your PC. Mine is to be an all in one media box solution that can also play dvds, mp3’s, cd’s etc and all of this running through a TV, and with minimal mouse+keyboard intervention.

I did a bit of a google on HTPC software solutions. It’s decided on an XP based system, as I can’t be fucked screwing around with a Linux based MythTV box as my Linux skillz are pretty much zero. It also means that I don’t have to worry about drivers and compatibility and the such.

I decided pretty early on that I didn’t want an XP Media Centre Edition (MCE) box, as I’m not a huge Microsoft fan, and was pretty sure – after no research at all... just a hunch – that I’d end up being pissed off at it because of MS’ obsession with DRM and closed formats or something...

This is when I stumbled across MediaPortal. It’s an XP based open source (and free!) software package that seemes to have all the features of any other HTPC PVR system, free or otherwise. It also has an active community and forums, excellent support, a growing list of plugins etc. So I’ll go with this for now.