Using information from internet is what distinguishes a Media Center PC from a harddisk recorder, a Tivo, etcetera.
MediaPortal is constantly finding information from the internet about the media it shows or plays. It gathers tv guide information for watching tv, artist information, related music and cd covers while listening to music, actors with your movies, episode guides with the tv series. And then there's the stuff that you can only get from the internet: Webradio, rss news feeds, movie trailers.
Now, this also means that using a Media Center isn't half the fun when you loose connection to the internet. Dutch readers: By all means - avoid Tele2 as an internet provider. It took the Swedish maffia 10 weeks to move my phone and internet connection.
In my new house I also made some improvements in connectivity. Instead of wireless, my desktop pc and Media Center PC are now hard wired to my ADSL router. That means I got rid of USB WiFi devices not starting up properly. And that I have 100Mbit connectivity between my PC's, or more if I upgrade the router. So I'm set up for some serious nerdmanship...
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