Freeware Media Centre software

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi peeps.



I want to try to put together a very basic media access PC for my
parents... - they already have a main PC, but this is located in the
kitchen, and it can't really move from there. This PC has their digital
music collection on its internal 160GB disk. (only about 8GB of
MP3's...). I want to try to make this available in the living room where
the main stereo lives, which serves the main speakers in the living
room, plus the garden speakers. I had thought about one of the various
streaming devices, such as Netgear MP101, squeezebox etc, but they're
not to believe it's worth spending any money to achieve this, plus I
have a loft full of PC's and PC parts so it seems like a good idea to
try to do it with whatever kit I already have available...



I have a surplus Maplin Book PC that a few of us bought a couple of
years ago. I've upgraded this to a PIII-866 & 256MB RAM, and I've got
XP
Pro running on it reasonably happily, this is also nice & small, and
reasonably quiet, and so could be setup in their lounge without being
too imposing...



What I want to know is what choice of front-end interface I can put on
this level of hardware... - I am aware of Xlobby and GBPVR and will be
looking at both of these, - but are there any others?

Requirements are:

1)       FREE!

2)       Simple to use

3)       Able to utilise an Evation IRMan (serial port version), which I
also have lying around, so will just use an IR remote for navigation

4)       Provide a nice interface for playing music - TV PVR functions
not important, the PC has no internal slots, so adding a TV card isn't
possible, - although one which is able to work with a USB freeview box
may be worth exploring, - but this machine only has USB 1.1 ports...



Cheers



Paul G.



PS, - please don't suggest switching to LINUX, - that's just not going
to happen for this project, since I don't have the time to learn LINUX
to the degree where I'd be able to support this machine as easily as I
can support a Windows box...





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