The Best Free HTPC/PVR Applications

This is a list of the best free HTPC/PVR applications available and my thoughts on them.

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1. GBPVR

Windows only. This is what I use day to day and it’s been very good to me for several years now.

+ Unobtrusive gui. Supports many different combinations of tv-cards. Simple configuration. Good wiki/manual and forum. Developed by a single man which makes it a very uniform application. Very slick removal of commercials. Client/server possibility. MDAPI plugins. Plays dvd isos. Hauppauge MVP and Popcorn Hour as clients.

- Small amount of 3rd party plugins and skins available. Poor translations. Doesn’t support the CAM-reader in cards like DigitalAnywhere so you have to use multidec.

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2. MediaPortal

Windows only. I really like the concept with a separate TV-server.

+ Powerful. Nice looking gui. Lots of plugins and skins available. Good translations. Support for tv-cards with inbuilt CAM-reader. Big forum. Plays dvd isos. Comes with Mpeg2 decoder. Easy installation that takes care of dependencies. Removes commercials. Client/server possibility. MDAPI plugins.

- Bloated. In a constant state of flux but hopefully things will stabilize with the release of 1.0. The gui gets in your way sometimes. Messy configuration.

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3. Windows Media Center

Comes free with Vista Home/Ultimate.

+ Absolutely beautiful gui. The best support for tv-cards. Simple installation and configuration. Feels very complete. A huge amount of plugins available. Supports X-BOX as an extender.

- File sharing problems with drm. Bad support for multiple tv-cards with differing channel lineups. Doing anything that isn’t standard involves either 3rd party software or editing the registry. Limited client support.

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4. XBMC

Windows, Linux, Mac, original X-Box. Media player originally created for the first generation X-Box. I haven’t got much experience with this and the porting to other platforms is still in it’s infancy but it does look very promising. Testing builds are best found in the XBMC forum.

+ Great looking and fast gui. Renders gui in OpenGL. Uses inbuilt decoders. No separate configuration application.

- No TV recording. No playback of Bluray and HD-DVD.

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5. Meedio

Windows only. Commercial application that Yahoo bought and rebranded as Go TV. An open source rewrite seems to become available as MeediOS. Free builds of some kind of hybrid between Yahoo Go TV and Meedio is also available.

+ Easy to use. Fast gui. Lots of plugins. Very nice first time configuration wizard. Simple installation.

- Messy configuration application. Not as developed as other alternatives. No client/server as of yet.

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6. MythTV

Linux only. I have really tried to like MythTV but it just isn’t ready yet.

+ Doesn’t require Windows. Stable and fast gui. Client/server possibility. MDAPI plugins. Removes commercials. Does pretty much what you want it to do. Makes you feel like a hacker.

- Ugly gui. Extremely messed up configuration application (for ex. TV-guide/EPG labeled as Video Source?). Using multiple TV-sources with different channel lineups is very difficult to configure. Bad documentation. Makes you feel stupid (could be a hint but I choose to ignore it).

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Software that probably belongs on this list but I haven’t tested them.

Boxee is an evolution of XBMC with some social features.
CenterStage looks like a nice alternative if you’re running mac and want to record TV.
LinuxMCE. Added because of comment below and I will have try it sometime since it looks very impressive. It does things very differently compared to other applications and has massive automation capabilities. I would suggest watching the LinuxMCE 0704 demo video for an example of what’s possible. If you have a knack for diving headfirst into complex applications and usually come out on top it might be the best choice especially if there’s need for automation and multiroom possibilties.