I am Canadian, but I live mostly in India. I started my career as a writer doing Public Relations but quickly moved into public online search systems for libraries and information centers. I worked as a System Analyst and Project Manager before becoming a private consultant. As a consultant, I made lots of money, invested wisely in real estate, and retired before 40. Now I only take on projects I want. I have written tons of user documentation, trained thousands of users, done endless presentations and I am so glad to be out of it all!

I started using MediaPortal in 2007 when my VCR broke and I could not find a DVD recorder here in India (no TiVo!). So it was the PVR functions that first attracted me. Then, I developed WebEPG grabbers for over 300 Indian TV Channels. I soon gave that up as EPG in India is a nightmare with no consistency and the websites are constantly changing format.  Now, I hardly ever watch or record TV since MP makes it so easy to just download and watch all my TV shows without worrying about what is broadcast where or when. MP is my favorite software of all time, hands down, and I am really picky!

My nick - Dadeo is a common nickname given by my friends and family - Daddy+Video since I provide most of them with the latest movies and TV Shows!

The MP Team, and community, is the best I have ever worked with and that includes a lot of really highly paid ‘experts’!  Their dedication, and brilliance, is awe inspiring so I am glad to help in any way I can.  I recently began writing the features pages for the new homepage and was invited to become a member of the Docs Team. I hope to take a crack at improving the Wiki some day soon.

Currently, I am also the author of the aMPed skin for 4:3 users – the underprivileged! When I am not on my computer, which is rare, I love hiking in the mountains, designing and renovating houses, and I maintain a website and library database of over 100,000 audio, video and written works for a non-profit organization.

Hi there!!

My real name is Flavius Georgescu and i'm from Romania but since 1999 i live in Rome,Italy...I used Pretoriano like nick since the day i've start playing the "BattleField" videogame and i was affascinated by the Roman Empire history since i was a kid.

I've found MediaPortal 4 years ago on a magazine while i was searching for a software to make my Twinhan card work decently... but had no luck cause my card wasn't supported yet.Joined the MP community forum 2 years ago and this year i was invited to be part of the Team as a tester and i have to say that i'm very proud to make part of it.After joining the Team i've realized the amount of work done by devs and testers is far beyond my expectation...sometimes feels like MP is a full time job,so thank you all guys.

MediaPortal community amazed me too,and is great to see how people try to help each other... so most of the time i try to do the same for all those users that need a hand.

Big Thanks to the community and keep up the good work guys

Hi reader!

User perspective:
How I got here? Well, like always it started from curiosity - a free HTPC software! What it can offer and can it match against other open-source projects?

So I started first lurking around and downloading all kind of versions whilst trying to get all working nicely together. As you might already guess it was everything than easy at those days; year must be something like 2005-2006 (can't remember anymore). After some experiment time I totally got rid of the idea of having a HTPC in living room as main source for media. MP was not ready yet for that task and Meedio failed to meet my expectations as well. Year 2007 however changed everything when urgent need of total media experience forced me back to MP arena. Like you can see from nick status it was May 2007 when joined to forum to get some help and enable some user submitted downloads.
And yes, in the meanwhile, MP evolved quite nicely Ever since this has been a love - hate relationship... oops. Seriously, nowadays using MP is a pure pleasure and I can recommend it to everyone from my heart.

Other view - being a developer:
It is time to reveal some backgrounds about one developer behind the curtains. Why to spend your valuable free time for a project like MediaPortal you may ask.

Well, I have spent so many enjoyable hours with MP watching movies and listening music that it was time to pay something pack. There is no free lunch if you ask me. Actually my first touch with c# was with some corrections I made for a plugin. And there it started. Doing some plugins that were missing and patches for things that annoyed me finally brought me into the team. And I'm amazed about the dedication and passion of the team members!

From coding skills point of view, if there exists such a thing, it goes back to 80's when I got my first computer; Sinclair Spectrum 48 with rubbish... I mean rubber keyboard. What a machine!
Today best use of that is door stopper Some basic and micro code stuff saw daylight even it took ages to nik-nak (= type) it. After that some other hobbies took my time and I passed Amiga era totally. First PC was Pentium 60 and then also some interest to coding raised again but in a form of study exercises. Some PC's later I'm here as a team member trying to make your media center experience a bit better.

Thanks for reading and try to bear with us developers

Cheers,
Manfred

P.S. Every change is an opportunity!