Reviewer: Tokar
 Read all my reviews
Date: 19 Oct 2005, 08:06 GMT
Overall rating:  | GUI:  Features: Ease of use: Value:
With Linux you have one choice for a PVR for your computer, that is MythTV. Its free.
With Windows there are freeware and shareware products.
You have BeyondTV...shareware and fair at best.
You have WinMyth, which is a port of MythTV to Windows, and not a very good one at that.
You have GBPVR...good luck setting this up if you dont have one of the supported TV cards.
Then there is the likes of iuVCR, WinDVR, ChrisTV, WinampTV...all of which are more of a TV viewing program as opposed to a software to let you take over your computer and let it act like a PVR like Tivo or something. They arent bad, dont get me wrong, they are just a completely different software.
And then theres MediaPortal.
MythTV, BeyondTV, GBPVR and MediaPortal are all softwares meant to emulate Tivo and Windows Media Center Edition such that you can take your own computer and turn it into a Media Center PC or your own Tivo, whichever is your cup of tea.
All of them are the same...they look the same, they strive to be the same thing, they provide the same features...
The places where MediaPortal excels:
1) its free (GB-PVR is free, MythTV is free, BeyondTV is not)
2) it supports a whole LIST of tv tuner cards (and a lot of ones that are unlisted) (GB-PVR while also free only supports the ones they list)
3) XML tv listings which you can download from zap2it.com can be imported into MediaPortal
4) It has a CVS updated 1-3 times a day.
5) It supports plugins
6) Skinning of the media center home
Its really nice...and it supported my TV tuner card that wasnt even listed on the supported TV tuner card list.
The XML TV listings imported beautifully.
The only miniscule negative is that if you import your TV listiings and the number of channels does not equal the channel number you desire you will get some interesting results.
First off, after you import channels, you have to sort them such that you can change channels im proper order.
Second you have to fill in all the blank channels just so you can enter in channel numbers properly and change to the correct corresponding channel.
For example, in USA, for the most part, channel 1 is, by law, not allowed to be used. The XML TV listings do not make note of a channel 1, so my channels start at 2 and up.
Without a blank channel 1 inserted (manually) into the settings everything I would hit the number "2" to change to channel 2, it would go not to channel 2, rather to the second channel in the listing which is 3.
Once I manually inserted a blank channel 1, everything went back to normal, up until I was missing another channel. I just had to fill in all the blanks to get it to change to the proper channels.
Everything else is great. It also supports IR remotes if you have them.
Plugns include Weather, Video Library, Music Library...
If you TV card supports it, MediaPortal can become a timeshifting program allowing you to pause, fast-forward and rewind "live" TV.
Excellent freeware program. |
