Recently I’ve noticed that more and more brand name computers are bundled with Windows Media Center. Of course, here at PCMech we build our own computers, and we usually purchase Windows XP Home, and avoid that extra media-centric interface for the sake of cost. But what if we could include all the features of Media Center for free? This week I found an app called MediaPortal v0.2 that will do just that.

Installation
First agree to the General Public License and choose to install DVD decoders (DScaler and Gabest MPA/MPV Decoder). These are required for DVD playback if you don’t have DVD software already installed. The installation will create two desktop icons and a program menu entry. The icons are labeled “MediaPortal” and “Setup Media Portal”. Choose the setup icon to prepare MediaPortal for your music, videos, photos and more.

Setup
The first options are general, such as startup with Windows, language, etc. I recommend unchecking “Always On Top,” otherwise MediaPortal will be very obtrusive, especially when you do any further configuration later on. Next, choose a skin from the five defaults. I chose MCE, which is a hardly subtle copy of Microsoft’s Media Center Edition software. Next, Media Player will search your entire hard drive for media. I would have liked the option to browse for my media, but this option is available later on. Next is Setup TV, including options for how and when to update the TV programming guide. Then you can setup a remote, choosing between MCE keyboard/remote, Hauppauge products, IR Transmitters, etc. If you have one of the supported remotes, you can even custom map the buttons to certain functions. Lastly you can setup the weather, including choices for English or metric scales and inputting any cities from around the world. Once setup is complete, you can start to use MediaPortal.

Usage
If you have ever used Windows Media Center Edition, you’ll see a very familiar interface after starting up MediaPortal. All the familiar “My”s are there; Videos, Radio, Music, Pictures, Plugins, and TV. There are also entries for Settings and Play DVD.

I tested My Music first. I quickly found that my music collection needed to be located in the My Music folder that you’ll find in your My Documents folder. Even going into the configuration via the Options menu and adding the location of my music collection did not show them properly in MediaPortal. Moving them to the My Music folder worked perfectly however. Once my music was in place, all of the usual features are available; custom playlists, Search, Views, sorting and Now Playing, which displays the current track along with player controls and album art. If the folder has none you can use Find Album Art to download it from the net. I recommend spend a few moments to set this up for your albums, if only for a more aesthetically pleasing look.

My Videos loads any movie files from your My Videos folder. One of mine did not show up, but a quick trip into the Config to add “.asf” as a movie file extension and I was all set. You will find that AVI, MPG, WMV, QuickTime and RealMedia are supported, as well as others. Videos, as well as DVDs, play in an otherwise empty screen with hidden, pull up controls at the bottom of the screen.

My Radio requires some configuration to add titles and stream URLs for your favorite radio stations. You can also search for Shoutcast stations in case you have favorites there. Once your stations are listed, you can pull them up in MediaPortal anytime. I would have liked a listing within the app, in case I grew tired of my original list.

My Weather is self-explanatory; displaying four day forecasts and current conditions for the cities you entered in the initial setup. When I looked at Images for the weather, I was reminded that the MediaPortal is still v0.2. Even though my hometown in the U.S. was my city of choice, the radar picture displayed that of Germany.  While you can enter URLs for different weather images via the Configuration options, a shot of my current city would have been welcome.

My TV includes options to watch TV shows, check programming and setup recordings. MediaPortal’s website contains a long list of supported TV tuners, including the popular Theater Pro 550 based cards. Unfortunately I don’t have a TV Tuner to test this function, but all the features are in place.

Finally, My Plug-ins contains a Tetris game, online movie trailers, and an app called Dvr-Mpeg Cut for quick movie editing.

Conclusion
Overall, Media Portal is a strong effort to duplicate Microsoft’s popular Media Center software. While Media Portal is not as polished as Microsoft’s program, it is very impressive freeware, especially for pre-version 1.0. Because the program is licensed under the GPL, there are dozens of skins, plugins and extras on the website to further add to and customize the look and functions of Media Portal. You can pick up the program here: http://www.team-mediaportal.com/ in a 36MB zip file.