As free open source software, MediaPortal:

• Understands development is a team effort and treats users as co-developers, which has proven to be the most effective option for rapid development
• Applies the 'Law of Diminishing Return' so the majority of effort is invested in implementing features which have the most benefit and widest general usage by the community.

These two points are part of the original vision statement for MediaPortal.  The bottom line is that YOU can contribute to the development of MediaPortal

Community Development

Development is community driven in several ways:

• new developers from the MediaPortal community are constantly added to Team-MediaPortal
• extension developers who follow the coding guidelines, policies and spirit of the team are provided access to the Team forums and IRC channel
• any developer can submit patches for fixes or new features to the Development Forums
• user surveys are conducted regularly to monitor hardware and system trends and obtain feedback on MediaPortal

User Input

MediaPortal users form a passionate and active community. Improvement Ideas and suggestions are constantly appearing in our Forums.

There is an Improvement Suggestions Forum dedicated expressly for you to provide feedback and suggestions to improve MediaPortal.

How to add an Improvement Suggestion

1. Give your thread a meaningful title, such as "Add skip step buttons to Topbar" rather than "improve navigation'
2. Add a prefix for the area or feature your suggestions applies to: i.e. Music, Videos, Skin, Configuration, Installation, etc.
3. Add as much informations as possible.  You can always update your first post.
4. Make sure you enter the data in the following format:
   Started on: 2006-11-13
   Last update: 2006-12-01
   Summary:  Short summary what it is about. New feature? Does it fix an existing problem?
   Description:  Describe the Improvement Suggestion as detailed as possibel. If possible include images (Mockups) to describe your idea.
5. Add a Poll to your suggestion to see how many users would be interested in such a feature.

Once users have indicated support for your suggestion and you have documented it thoroughly, if you have coding skills, consider providing a patch in the

If a feature cannot be added to the core application of MediaPortal, consider posting your proposal in the Development ForumsPlugins forum to see if any community developer may be interested to develop a plugin.