Blog

• HTPC, Mediacenters, Work and screensavers

  published on 5/26/2006 6:33 PM

  It's that time agin. Time again for another status update that is. Well actually it's a bit over that time but anyway, better late than never as they say.

  My attention has been drifting away from coding to my HTPC for the last few weeks. I used [url:meedio|http://www.meedio.com/] before as media center on my HTPC but they got bought up by yahoo and closed down their site very fast. They closed it down so fast so I didn't even have time to grab the last update of the software. Yahoo will release a media center software solution based on medio but I dont feel like waiting around for them to do that. Instead I have converted to [url:Mediaportal|http://www.team-mediaportal.com/]. It's an opensource (and thus completely free) media center software that is very nice. If your looking for a media center then I can highly recommend it. Just dont forget to take a look in [url:www.mediaportal-skins.net|http://www.mediaportal-skins.net/] for some more skins to mediaportal.

  On the subject on HTPC I have been using [url:mplayer|http://www.mplayerhq.hu] for quite some time and that's probably the best mediaplayer out there. It has it's roots in the linux world so it's not that user friendly just yet but more and more frontends are showing up. The best one i have found so far is called [url:MPUI|http://mpui.sourceforge.net/]. The good thing with mplayer is that it plays everything (except DRM movies) out of the box. So you dont have to install a lot of codecs/filters to get it up and running. All you need is just one single nice .exe file and your set.

  Progress on the next screensaver has been going a bit slower than expected. The main reason for this is because I have been working a lot on our next main project at [url:work|http://www.playngo.com]. So when I get home after spending a number of hours infront of a computer I don't always feel like sitting a few more hours infront of another computer. At least we are making great progress on that project and it's fun to work on so it's not all bad. I have managed to do a bit of work on the next screensaver and just to let you in on just how large this project is so did I reach 40'000 lines of code the other day. Let's just say this is one massive screensaver and is without a doubt my most complex screensaver ever. Let's just hope it's fun to watch the thing also.

  If your a burnout revenge addict as I am then say hello if we ever meet in a game on Xbox live on the 360. My gamertag is Xetick.

  /Joakim E.