OStatic

Back in December, MediaPortal 1.0, an open source application that turns a PC/TV into a sophisticated media center and digital video recorder, arrived. Originally based on the XBMC project, version 1.0 was a nearly complete redesign, and has gotten quite a bit of notice, despite a few bugs. On March 15th, the folks behind MediaPortal plan to release a 1.0.1 version with usability improvements. Along with the Plex media center for Mac OS X (MediaPortal is Windows only), Boxee for Linux and the Mac, and MythTV for Linux, the open source community is pushing strongly into video and rich media content management. Here are some good resources if you're evaluating these media center apps.?

Boxee is just one of several open source media center applications. Sam recently compiled a round up of some of the most popular, and I have been using MythTV for over a year now as a TiVO/DVR alternative.

I like MythTV for several reasons. It's not a project for the faint of heart, but it's less the fault of the software than the wild array of hardware that can be conceivably used in nearly every imaginable configuration. It is quite stable, and doesn't require hefty system specs. I didn't think overly about Boxee when I first heard of it. MythTV worked for me.

One thing that MythTV can't do, of course, is stream Netflix movies. I've all too frequently, now, run into problems with Netflix disks being a little too rough to run in my MythTV box's DVD player. This isn't the fault of MythTV -- it's a hardware/media issue.

Boxee is bringing Netflix onboard. There are a few catches, and a few bits that are a little unclear, but this might lead, at the very least, to Boxee running alongside my MythTV installation.

The Capital Times ran a piece on home-brew, open source DVRs (digital video recorders, in the tradition of TiVO). Though TiVO's software is open source, any unsigned modified code is blocked from running on these devices. Home-brew DVRs act like TiVOs, with a few side benefits. The article mentions, incidentally, that this is not a project for the faint of heart.

My MythTV box has been humming in my living room just shy of a year. It's not a project for a new user, but it's a better application, and less complicated to install and maintain than you've been led to believe.