MediaPortal
MediaPortal
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MediaPortal

MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playing, pausing, and recording live TV; playing DVDs, videos, and music; viewing pictures; and other functions. Plugins allow it to perform additional tasks, such as watching online video, listening to music from online services such as Last.fm, and launching other applications such as games. It interfaces with the hardware commonly found in HTPCs, such as TV tuners, infrared receivers, and LCD displays.

The MediaPortal source code was initially forked from XBMC (now Kodi), though it has been almost completely re-written since then. MediaPortal is designed specifically for Microsoft Windows, unlike most other open-source media center programs such as MythTV and Kodi, which are usually cross-platform.

Graphical user interfaces

MediaPortal can be controlled by any input device, that is supported by the Windows Operating System.

MediaPortal uses its own TV-Server to allow to set up one central server with one or more TV cards. All TV related tasks are handled by the server and streamed over the network to one or more clients. Clients can then install the MediaPortal Client software and use the TV-Server to watch live or recorded TV, schedule recordings, view and search EPG data over the network. Since version 1.0.1, the client plugin of the TV-Server has replaced the default built-in TV Engine.

Even without a network (i.e. a singleseat installation), the TV-Server treats the PC as both the server and the client.

The TV-Server supports watching and recording TV at the same time with only one DVB/ATSC TV Card, on the same transponder (multiplex). Broadcast Driver Architecture is used to support as many TV cards as possible. The major brands of cards, like digital-everywhere, Hauppauge, Pinnacle, TechnoTrend and TechniSat, including analog cards, provide BDA drivers for their cards.

The video player of MediaPortal is a DirectShow Player, so any codec/filter can be used. MediaPortal uses the codec from LAV Filters by default, but the codec can be changed to all installed ones, such like Ffdshow, PowerDVD, CoreAVC, Nvidia PureVideo etc. MediaPortal also support video post-processing, with any installed codec. Due to the DirectShow player implementation, MediaPortal can play all media files that can be played on Windows.

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