I think I have gone on about MythTV enough, what about the other major open source media center application, which has many of the features of myth and the added bonus of being Windows-based and hence a lot more familiar territory for most people?
I have run Mediaportal 1.0 for a couple of months now, it's currently at RC2 and has been pretty good. You may have noticed my HTPC system isn't exactly top of the line, a single core and 1GB of RAM means Vista doesn't run very smoothly. MP can be sluggish, I think the remote lag has been fixed, but often loading a channel and setting up a recording can be slow. The worst problems come when recording 2+ shows, especially if some are HD, and watching another at the same time. The show I'm watching will skip or pause, I don't think the hard drive is fully up to the task.
Now plenty of people of these forums already run Mediaportal but there also seem to be plenty running GB-PVR and MCE and to be honest I'm often not sure why. One obvious point is the use of Popcorn hours as a frontend for a GB-PVR server; they look like a sweet quiet, reliable client, but what you are missing out on is full support for all of Freeview HD's audio formats (and hence can watch all the channels), and support for recording multiple channels of a single digital frequency. This is something I do all the time, and to test out my system I once got it recording 5 shows at once, including the HD channels, and it worked fine. I'm sure it could do more, even an HD stream is only around 1.2MB/s, but I got bored. On top of that of course you have support for multiple sources (digital and analogue) and can hence have Prime and FreeviewHD on one system. Again, can't see why you would want to go for Vista MCE instead. Yes it is more stable but I fail to see why so many people have posted at The Green Button complaining about the delays, and possible cancellation, of H.264 support when there is a viable alternative avaliable right now.
This brings me to my point about Mediaportal, its flexibility and feature support, which come from its ability to lean on other software for support. MP doesn't have built-in H.264 decoding, it uses an external codec such as PowerCinema. MP doesn't need drivers for all the TV cards it supports, it uses the provided Windows drivers. And I don't know the technical details but MP also leans on various other parts of the operating system, such as Aero for video performance. This of course gives it a huge advantage over MythTV, which requires all these critical supporting components to be written by volunteers and included in the operating system. Hence, I use it :)
Finally I thought I might add to this blog with what I have been watching. I recently managed to add to my standard fare of The Daily Show and CSI/SVU etc with Friday Night Lights, 8.30pm Friday C4. Set in the heart of Texas; it is about football, God, cheerleaders and football. Very interesting insight into what these small towns revolve around, namely Friday night college football. You thought we take rugby seriously here, we have nothing on the Americans!
Geekzone subscribers private forums
A few days ago over on Twitter there was a discussion about "free" services and one of the topics was about selling features that are valuable to users.
So here is something we don't promote much but is available: Geekzone Subscriptions. In summary Geekzone subscribers have the ability to upload images (handy for forums and blogs), the option to browse Geekzone without advertising and the ability to create and manage their own "by invitation only" private forums on Geekzone.
To make things a bit more interesting we have just changed the private forum limit from one to 15. That's it: each Geekzone Subscriber can create and manage up to 15 private forums, each with its own access list, only visible to those allowed to access the private discussions.
We also have our own e-mail domain available to our users, free of charge. Geekzonemail gives users a Windows Live ID that can be used wherever Windows Live ID are accepted - including Windows Live access, Windows Live Messenger (MSN) and more. It provides Windows Mobile users with push e-mail and you can access your email with Microsoft Outlook Connector or Windows Live Mail Desktop.
No Critical Security Bulletins for July
For July, Microsoft released only 4 new Security Bulletins and none of them were Critical. Actually, all 4 were rated as Important, which typically means they are serious, but that...
Vodem stick officially appears online on Vodafone
You can finally find it - the Vodafone Vodem Stick is here.
With 7.2mbps HSDPA (where available) and 900MHz 3G coverage support included, it's a miniature device but more advanced than the Vodem.
Pricing for it seems to vary across pages though:
- $199/$99 for 1GB/3GB plan (respectively) on 24mths
- $99/FREE for 1GB/3GB plan (respectively) on 24mths
Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference
This week Microsoft, and every company that is a partner of Microsoft, have descended upon Houston. Thankfully, I live here so I didn't have to travel far. I get to...
What is ASLR?
Windows Vista includes a variety of security features not found in previous operating systems such as Windows XP. One of these features is ASLR. ASLR is like a shell game...
Confirmed speakers for Code Camp event
I just read the confirmed line up of speakers for the Code Camp event happening 31st August just before the Microsoft Tech Ed New Zealand.[quote]We've finalised the speakers for Code Camp on 31 August -- and I'm very happy to report ... (more in the full post)
My disagreement with Richard Stallman
Why is free software important? Software and computers are all pervasive in today's world and thus demand our utmost diligence: The lives we live are run and organised by software, we depend on software, we trust our most intimate d... (more in the full post)
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