XBMC with MCE or MediaPortal

Question

I'm an avid user of XMBC, but would also like to record some TV. I could use Windows MediaCenter or MediaPortal. MediaPortal was originaly a fork of XMBC, but I have heard many negative things about it. Does anyone have experience running these two?

Answer 1

For TV, Mediaportal works fine for me currently using 1.02 version. Pre 1.0 versions had sometimes issues but those where beta (maybe why the negative?). Mediaportal got lot of settings (this is not necessary a good thing or bad) one can tweak around with, it do got a advanced/easy mode for settings. Most negative would be setting it up as it do depend on external codecs and whatnot (and there is always something that isn't working (ok) as I want with avi, mkv etc playback. but this is more a codec problem rather than MP itself).

Using Mediaportals tvserver it do support subtitles in digital broadcasts, this is the main reason I use Mediaportal and not something else (don't know any other media center that support subtitles from digital broadcasts).

Answer 2

I have been running MediaPortal for about 2 years now with no serious issues... I think the earlier versions may have been a bit too experimental for serious use, but the last few releases have not had any major issues for me.

Considering MediaPortal is free software, maybe the best approach is to just download and install it, and form your own opinions.

Answer 3

you could setup a myth TV backend to record TV and keep the XBMC for your frontend with the Myth TV script for XBMC this answer to a question of mine might help a little

Answer 4

There is this port of XBMC with TV and recording features.

It uses the TVServer from Media Portal to add TV to XBMC.

I use it but I had never really tried recording. So I don't know how good it might work. I also don't know if there is a way to program the recording time.

You can find the port at: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc/

Builds at: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc/prebuild.html

Documentation and installation at: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc/mppvr-doc.html

PS.: I am not anyhow affiliated with this project but I am really quite happy to have my XBMC with TV at home. I am kinda enthusiast of it :-)

2) I am using XBMC on Windows