I recently built a PC solely for the purpose of
using it as a HTPC, constantly hooked to TV, for playback of MKV's , XVID's and eventually Blu-ray Discs.

Now I could put into Windows, and fire up VLC and play videos that way, but thats a little cumbersome, and not exactly user friendly ( read: girl friend friendly) .

Xbox Media Center, recently was released for Windows,

http://xbmc.org/

I figure, I'd bring back memories of the days of the Xbox, when I used to use XBMC for Divx files

. I originally had Catalyst 8.8's and found playback stuttering. Got the 8.9's and everything works pretty good ( still early in dev.) Can play MKV's Xvid's everything I threw at it , so far, and its a user friendly menu.

Any one use any Media Centre's or similar programs. Linux MCE looked interesting but Hardware compatibility kind of turned me off.

I started with GBPVR (free) and once Zap2It stopped giving the EPG listings (shows & times) for free I bought SageTV. Its worked pretty well for me thus far.

Both of them are girlfriend friendly. At least my non-techie girlfriend has no problem.

I use Media Portal http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ open source, works like a charm....much like Media Centre for Windows. I use fddshow through media portal to play mkv and stream the 5.1 audio as well.[/url]

Has a nice interface and is very wife friendly...she has all the shows and music organized

Checking this out again. Been a little while.


Thank you for the reminder!

Yeah Xbox Media Centre is freaking sweet.


Up for this!

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=P2OAOfXN89I

This video was cool.

Demonstrated XBMC.