If you are looking to transform your existing (or build a new) XP machine into a full blown media center, rather than spending a small fortune on software, give MediaPortal a whirl.

MediaPortal is an open source software package which allows you to do basically anything you would find on a full media center suite. Rather than list them here, check out the feature list on their site.

MediaPortal requires XP with SP2 installed, so unfortunately you can’t run it on a previous OS (98/2000) you might have lying around. To me, this looks very similar to the Linux package, MythTV, only for Windows.

Anyone have any experience with this MediaPortal? If so post it.