Media Portal Test Drive

After posting a rave review on the Media Portal project, I figured I'd better get it setup with my entertainment center.  This weekend I installed it on an extra PC connected to my television. 

Hardware Configuration
My PC is a Sony VAIO 1.5ghz, 512MB RAM with a GForce4 card (I'm sure you could probably get by with less)  I've connected the s-video out on the card to the television for video and used a Belkin RCA converter cable from the sound card for audio.  The wireless keyboard and mouse were “borrowed” from my new Dell as was the Cyberlink remote control.  A Linksys Wireless USB adapter provides connectivity to my home network.

Media Portal Installation
Setting it up was a breeze.  Just make sure you have .NET 1.1 and DirectX 9 installed.  Download the latest Media Portal binaries from SourceForge, and run the install.  After the install, I'd advise running the configuration.exe app in the Media Portal directory.  From here, you can setup the paths to your music, pictures, videos, etc.  (There is a menu option from within the main program, but the external application has a better configuration UI)

Cooking with Gas
Things are going very smoothly...I am really cooking with gas now!  My digital photos are available, and so are my home videos and music.  To top things off I even have a weather page updated from the Weather Channel.  While the software is still under development, it is running very well. 

DVD Support
Next, I wanted to check out the DVD functionality.  Well, my PC didn't have a DVD codec installed.  Bummer.  After some time on Google, a free download from Cliprex Video Software came to rescue and I was back in business.

Taking it to the next level
While exploring the software, I found the ability to turn on a few additional plug-ins.  One of the plug-ins is a news browser for RSS feeds.  The only problem is you can't configure it from the GUI yet.  Luckily the source code was available, and after a bit of detective work I found the solution.

Here it goes...after turning on the news plug-in with the configuration app, add the following XML snippet to the mediaportal.xml file.  (Feel free to customize it with your favorite feeds)

  <section name="rss">
    <entry name="siteName1">Slashdot</entry>
    <entry name="siteURL1">http://slashdot.org/index.rss</entry>
    <entry name="siteName2">Weblogs@asp.net</entry>
    <entry name="siteURL2">http://weblogs.asp.net/MainFeed.aspx</entry>
  </section>

The RSS browser is still pretty basic and doesn't format the HTML embedded in some feeds.  But, it is definitely a cool feature and is bound to improve in the future.

And the verdict is...
This software is off the hook!  The developers have done a great job and it is very stable.  They are also continuing to improve its functionality.   For example, I saw a recipe plug-in is in the works.  So give it a try, after all...its free!