Yes, Another Blog

The world can always use another blog.

–Apple

Having a full-time HTPC/Media server can be one of the best things you can do for your movie watching experience. It keeps all your movies ready to play at any time.

The best thing you can do for your HTPC is adding a front-end application. Many people use Media Center Edition (MCE) or Vista’s MCE (VMC) and it will work for almost 100% of all your needs. But if you want to expand your front-end to almost endless features you will definitely need at third-party front-end.

For me, MediaPortal is the best choice for a simple front-end that allows endless features. Check out Team-Mediaportal’s site for all the plug-ins and extensions and you will find an endless variation to a simple application.

I stuck with a movie only front-end. The Moving Pictures plug-in is by far the best movie plug-in that I have found so far. Once you have the initial set-up all you have to do is set your Watch folders/drives and let the plug-in import all your movies and TV shows and watch it get the IMDb information. Most titles (about 90%) will have background artwork for each movie but you can always add your own if it does not find any. After that, any time you add/delete a movie from any of your drives/folders it will do the same to the front-end.

Here are some screencaps from my front-end using Moving Pictures: (click to see full-sized)

This is so NSFW. These guys are always dead on.

In a home network with one router and three switches and 7 PC’s a bottleneck is a major PITA to find. I never understood how large IT departments do it with 1000’s of PCs.

I am sure this will take me hours to find a simple task that could take minutes.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and get your priorities in order.

Blogging will resume soon.