HTPC / Media management software suggestions

[entity]

Hey all,

I've built my "HTPC" and am currently looking for some good software to make use of this.
I have a lot of ripped from DVD movies stored in the .mkv format on my hard-drive, and some torrented ones. Is there any application that will automatically pull the imdb info for these movies and give easy access to it? A lot of the movies are in Hindi and some in English. I've tried Media Portal but it only pulls the imdb data for some movies. I think the ripped movies were not named in the proper format. Are there any other applications with better search capabilities?
Also, I have recently downloaded MAME with a few ROMS. Is there an app with the above functionality plus MAME integration?
I do not have any TV Tuners yet for recording but am planning on getting a dual tuner with ATSC.. so recording will be a priority in the future.

Please suggest some paid/unpaid software available that you may know of that does the above.

Thanks

[felixmo]

I recommend Beyond TV, it's a great piece of software!:D

[WolfDV]

http://xbmc.org/ great media program

no mame/emu intergration yet

[Mistro]

If you plan to stick to Windows Media centre, this may also do the trick:

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/07/getting-movie-metadata-with-metabrowser.html

The site is for Windows 7, but that article should work with Vista.

[fitbrit]

For managing your media, I find J River Media Center to be unparalleled. There is a bit of a learning curve, but once you know how to customise your library, you can see it any way you want. New builds are released several times a week, and they really listen to what the customers want.

There are image editing and media burning tools built-in too, as well as custom made plug-ins etc. Multi-room capability, which means you can play different music in different parts of your home if you have the supporting hardware. A new feature allows you to use a netbook or a second computer as a remote for your htpc. The new theater view is pretty slick too - screenshot coming.

I find that the file editing and tagging tools to be the best. Let's say you have a whole season of a show, downloaded from different scene releases. In one dialog box you can select the whole lot and name them anyway you want to see them, for example - Breaking Bad S01E1 to S01E7 from 7 different files. Then you can rename the files based on tags e.g.

"Name Season Episode Resolution Source VideoCodec AudioCodec",

so my example would be

"Breaking Bad S01E01 720p BluRay h264 AC3.mkv" etc.

AND you can place them all in folders anywhere on your PC server based on any properties of the media all in one simple dialog box.

So in my example above I'd rename the files as mentioned, and then place them on my server on my T drive in a folder called /Breaking Bad/Breaking Bad S01

Where it excels is in HUGE libraries. I have about 80 GB of music and close to 12 TB of BluRays/HD-DVDs ripped onto my server and it's handled very well.

[fitbrit]

Two shots of the Theater View "10 foot" GUI:

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/7070/jrmc2.jpg

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/5967/jrmc1.jpg

[entity]

The JRiver and MetaBrowser apps seem just what I'm looking for in terms of content identification / management..
xbmc looks cool too..
hehe too many options now it seems.. only thing to do now is to test them all :D
thanks for the help

[fitbrit]

Here are some things to help you with a decision:

* XBMC skins can be way cooler than JRMC
* JRMC is becoming more and more customisable, including xml editing of the front end. It's getting cooler all the time.
*XBMC is free
*JRMC costs about $40 US, but you get tons of updates, new features and fixes - on average 200 per version. (Current version is 14)
*The forums of JRMC are an excellent place to get questions answered.
*JRMC can playback any file that has directshow filters for it - no playing around with merit values etc.

I can't say much about XBMC as I've only used it a couple of times, but I can say that JRMC has so many features that I'm still discovering more and more. If you're an advanced user who is computer savvy, JRMC is perfect. The idea is to use your savvyness to set up your library in a simple to use way. Viewschemes allow you to choose the perfect album for the mood you're in by hierarchically drilling down through categories.

A lot of people migrate to JRMC after having tried other, free software. Other than wasted time, there's not much to lose by trying free stuff first - it may suit your needs.

[Mistro]

XBMC is really really good. However I've had problems with it outputting 5.1 Digital Audio over HDMI with my ATI card for some reason.

[mr_raider]

Last I checked, XBMC windows version can't use DXVA acceleration. Has that been resolved?

[mp328]

guess nobody else is using SageTV.

The only software ever i actually paid for lol


there are too many things to change on it, to make it look which ever u like

and there is tons of tools, including one that will pull all the info from imdb or tvdb for ur movies/tv shows including "fanart" (posters and backgrounds)

u might be able to use the tool even without sagetv install, as it is a standalone version that is accesible thru command prompt commands http://code.google.com/p/customsagetv/wiki/BatchMetadataImporter

http://babgvant.com/downloads/pluckyhd/homepagejokertheme.jpg
http://babgvant.com/downloads/pluckyhd/homepagereflectionstheme.jpg
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=7956&d=1234481512http://babgvant.com/downloads/pluckyhd/bottomtypeinfoviewblack.jpg