Baron Of Hell

Anybody use either of these or something like these? how do you like it? I'm looking into these because I'm thinking about burning all my DVDs to a hard drive. My music and pictures are already on a drive. I'd use one of these programs to watch movies and play music on my pc. Both of these can be used with a pc remote. I'm planning on getting a streamzap remote and teach my universal 550 remote the codes. Then I'll be able to control all my media from my 550 remote.

Baron Of Hell

I was just playing around with both of these. What I really would like is a way to turn VLC into a HTPC app but I was unable to find any skins or the like for it that would give me big fonts so I can pick my movies from the couch.

Any way GB-PVR doesn't have a way to use external programs and the tv guide crashes on me. It also seems fairly slow. In order to use this fully I would have to install at least 5 codecs. I don't like installing codecs. This is the reason I use vlc. So I would say this is useless for me and a poor app in general.

Mediaportal can use external apps. I have it setup to use vlc which seems to work perfectly. It runs fast but took a long time to switch to fullscreen. The weather mode worked. Seems like a clean interface. It has skins that can be downloaded so I might try that later. So it looks like this is the one I will be using until something better comes along.

Oh wait Mediaportal can not use external music or picture apps. This is probably not a problem for most people. For me it is minor because mediamonkey and whatever picture viewer I have is way better than mediaportals. However, I have no way to control my other apps from the couch. Well I could use a remote for both but I wouldn't be able to see what I am selecting.