Page 1 of Media Portal

Has anyone used this free software as an alternative to Windows Media Centre?

is it any good?

Media Portal is still very much in development stage. It`s biggest advantage over the flaky Media Center is the ability to display WDM driver based analog TV (ie. those that are not hardware based) as well as hardware based analog and BDA driver based digital TV. Windows MCE only handles BDA driver based digital TV and hardware encoded analog TV.

I have tested both programs extensively and found the following:-

1. Windows MCE can lose the tuned channels and retuning will not work.
2. Windows MCE has the advantage of using a remote extender to control a freeview box but double digit channel seclection fails.
3. MediaPortal requires very difficult configuration of analog TV via a configuration file requiring manual input of the PIN connectors, MPEG 2 decoders, muxers, etc.
4. MediaPortal allows seamless channel changing from analog channels to digital channels WITHOUT reinstallation or setup. That is, both analog and digital channels (and indeed all tuned in channels of all TV cards in your system) are part of the same channel setup. Windows MCE is a pain because if you want to switch from analog to digital or vice versa then you have to retune the channels and as mentioned earlier, if you lose the channels of one setup then sometimes it will NOT retune them back.
5. MediaPortal has much more plugins available than Windows MCE.
6. Both MediaPortal and Windows MCE do not work straight away after installation if your PC does NOT have an MPEG 2 decoder. You need an MPEG 2 decoder for them to work properly (for DVD playback and analog TV in the case of MediaPortal).