Overview

There are two different options for the 'Home' screen in MediaPortal: Home (Classic) or BasicHome.

Choosing Your Default Home Screen

In Configuration > GUI settings, you may choose which Home screen displays when you start MediaPortal or press the home or green button on your remote. In fact you can choose to use only one of the home screen options.

You may also change your default home screen within MediaPortal, see General GUI Settings.

Home

The Home window is very easy to use. Just scroll through the options and press Enter/OK to select your option.

You can customize the home screen as follows:

• Choose which items, features or plugins display on the Home screen in Configuration > Plugins:
  • Enable or Disable a plugin.
  • Choose to display the plugin on either the Home Screen or the Plugins screen.
• Choose the order items will display in Configuration > Plugins > Home.
• Determine the scroll method - either fix the scroll bar position (such as the middle item) and allow the items to scroll, or allow the scroll bar to scroll up and down the items.
• Enable or disable animations - on older PC:s you may wish to disable animations (like slide, fade, rotation effects) to improve performance.

Of course you can always redesign the Home screen by Customizing > Skins.

Using Home

From the Home Screen you can access all features of MediaPortal. The list shows you all available modules. By default you can scroll through this list. However, if you disable scrolling menu items in Configuration > Home Plugin, then only those items that you have selected will be displayed, or only those that fit in the menu space. 

To close or shutdown MediaPortal, press to access the Top bar, see Shutdown Menu below.

Plugins

The Plugins screen is like a companion to the Home Window. It functions in exactly the same way, and looks just like the Home window. It allows you to have a separate window to list all your plugins, especially those you may not use as often.

You can choose the features or plugins that display on the Plugins screen or the Home screen, see Configuration > Plugins.

BasicHome

The BasicHome window allows skin designers to completely customize the startup i.e. home window. Many skins offer multiple BasicHome layouts and some provide a BasicHome Editor to allow you to customize the items that display on the BasicHome window.

To access the Basic Home window from the Home window, press the green button on your remote, or .

Using BasicHome

Since BasicHome can be designed uniquely for each skin, using it depends on the skin you choose.

The most recently added movies (to the video database) are displayed when Videos is selected:

To close or shutdown MediaPortal using the Default skin, press to access the menu and select Exit to access the Shutdown Menu (see below.) 

Shutdown Menu

The shutdown button  will open the Shutdown menu:

Access to the shutdown button/menu can vary depending on the skin you use.

In the Default Skin it can be accessed via the Topbar:

1. Home (Classic) - press
2. Basic Home - press to access the menu and select Exit
3. Other windows - press to access the Main menu, then from the top menu item.