XBMC is an award winning media center application for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and XBox. The ultimate hub for all your media, XBMC is easy to use, looks slick, and has a large helpful community.

The XBMC Team has just released the latest version of XBMC media center, code named 'Atlantas', go try it out

Download page

Anyone know how this compares to Media Portal?
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Here is a feature list of xbmc, we are using media portal at work at the moment while they both seem very similar i will have to test xbmc more to see if there are any significant/better differences

I have used Media Portal briefly, and find XBMC better by far, as well as being more portable.
From what I've seen, most of Media Portal has to be configured from outside the interface itself, and seems to be lacking a lot of features that XBMC has. Plus I find it runs slower in general (although I am using crap hardware).

Got try it out

HashBox Wrote:I have used Media Portal briefly, and find XBMC better by far, as well as being more portable.
From what I've seen, most of Media Portal has to be configured from outside the interface itself, and seems to be lacking a lot of features that XBMC has. Plus I find it runs slower in general (although I am using crap hardware).

Got try it out

I haven't used either, but I like Media Portal better so far because I wouldn't want to start using X-Box Media Center Media Center (like they say on their site) without first going to an Automatic Teller Machine machine and withdrawing enough cash to buy me a large Liquid Crystal Display display.

I just installed this and tried it out last night -- Seems pretty good. The interface is really nice.

However; doesnt seem very stable (crashed about 4x); uses its own internal codecs to play media (bad if you want to use things like CoreAVC for playing h264 content); for me video stutters a bit. It may just be me but navigation with the keyboard is terrible.

Impressed that it supports http proxy with authentication. Also impressed with the auto getting data from IMDB for movies and TV etc.

You're right, it is pretty unstable, keyboard control sucks unless you know which keys to be pressing (a little unintuitive, although I set up a remote for mine), video playback seems to vary system to system, although I mostly only used it to play music, and it did that perfectly fine. Internal codecs and things are most likely related to it being originally made for the Xbox, and therefore the ports seem quite lacking.

Video improved after turning off VSync but still a bit choppy. It seems Media Portal is a bit different in that its more geared at watching live TV as well -- XBMC does not do this unfortunalty

Still they need to come up with a good keyboard navigation system.