MediaPortal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 MediaPortal running on Windows XP MCE |
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| Developed by | Team-MediaPortal |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 1.0.1 / 10 April 2009 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Media center |
| Licence | GNU General Public License |
| Website | www.team-mediaportal.com |
MediaPortal is an open source media center software with a 10-foot user interface design for the living-room TV that acts as front-end for Personal Video Recorder (PVR), video, pictures, music and many more functionalities. MediaPortal runs under Microsoft Windows unlike most other open source media center programs, such as MythTV and Freevo, which run on Linux.
MediaPortal allows a computer to perform many entertainment-related tasks, such as recording, pausing, and rewinding live television, much like a PVR box such as TiVo. Other functionality includes watching video, listening to music with dynamic playlist building based on the social music network Last.fm, launching and playing games, recording live radio and browsing picture collections. MediaPortal supports a plugin system and a skin engine allowing users to extend the base software.
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[edit] Features
- Direct X GUI
- Video Mixing Renderer 9
- Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) on Vista
- Advanced Digital Video Broadcasting support (Common Interface, DVB radio, DVB EPG etc..)
- Built-in Weather, RSS reader, and Wikipedia, ...
- Plugins
[edit] Requirements
[edit] Minimum hardware requirements
The minimum hardware requirements listed here are for standard definition resolution playback and recording with MPEG-2 video compression using a single TV-tuner. Multiple tuners, or MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) playback carries higher system requirements, see 1080i/1080p HDTV minimum hardware requirements.
- 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III (or equivalent) processor
- 256 MB (256 MiB) of System RAM
- DirectX 9.0 hardware-accelerated GPU with at least 64MB of video memory
- Graphics chips which support this and are compatible with MediaPortal:
- ATI Radeon series 9600 (or above)
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (or above), GeForce FX 5200 (or above) and nForce 6100 series (or above)
- Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (integrated i865G)
- Matrox Parhelia
- SiS Xabre series
- Graphics chips which support this and are compatible with MediaPortal:
- 200 MB (200 million bytes) free harddisk-drive space for the MediaPortal software
- 12 GB or more free harddisk-drive space for Hardware Encoding or Digital TV based TV cards for timeshifting purposes
[edit] HDTV minimum hardware requirements
HDTV (720p/1080i/1080p) playback/recording, and also recording from multiple tuners, and playback of MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video, carries higher system requirements.
- 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 (or equivalent) processor
- 512 MB of System RAM
- DirectX 9.0 hardware-accelerated GPU with at least 128MB of video memory
- Graphics chips which support this and are compatible with MediaPortal:
- ATI Radeon series 9600 (or above)
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 (or above), GeForce FX 5200 (or above) and nForce 6100 series (or above)
- Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (integrated i865G)
- Matrox Parhelia
- SiS Xabre series
- XGI Volari V Series and XP Series
- Graphics chips which support this and are compatible with MediaPortal:
- 200 MB free harddisk-drive space for the MediaPortal software
- 12 GB or more free harddisk-drive space for Hardware Encoding or Digital TV based TV cards for timeshifting purposes
[edit] Operating System and Software requirements
- Windows XP 32-bit Edition with Service Pack 2 or later
- Windows Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2 or later
- Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit with Service Pack 1 or later
- Microsoft .NET Framework 2
- DirectX 9.0c
- Windows Media Player 11
[edit] See also
- Media PC
- Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE)
- Windows Media Center Extender
- Windows Media Connect
- Windows Media Player
- XBMC Media Center - the GPL open source software that MediaPortal was originally based upon.
- Comparison of PVR software packages
- Microsoft PlaysForSure
