Monday, December 22, 2008

Add Christmas Cheer to your HTPC with Holiday Themes

Want to add a little special Christmas spirit to your Home Theater PC (HTPC) this season?  If you use SageTV, MediaPortal and BeyondTV you are in luck as each of these HTPC programs have Christmas themes you can install and use on your own HTPC.

 

SageTV

I've been working on several themes for the SageTV addon "SageMC" recently and decided to experiment with a few different Christmas themes to begin learning how to make my own themes for SageTV.  I'm fairly happy with the ones I've made so far.  The Christmas themes for SageMC include:

Holiday Sleigh Theme for SageMC

preview

 Installation Instructions and Download for the Holiday Sleigh Theme

 

Next I made a Holiday Snowman Theme for SageMC:

preview

 

Installation Instructions and Download for the Holiday Snowman Theme

 

And finally the Holiday Christmas Tree Theme for SageMC:

preview

Installation Instructions and Download for the Holiday Christmas Tree Theme

 

I created the icons in each of these themes by modifying the icons from the BlueTwo theme with a little santa hat.  The background images were found at PS3-themes.comThe SageTV Christmas theme discussion thread has more information as well.

 

 

Media Portal

Media Portal seems to have a new Christmas theme each year and 2008 is no exception.  This year we have two Christmas Themes:

First up is the Blue3 Christmas Theme staring the MeePo characters:

XmasMP3

Info and Download for the Blue3 Christmas Add-on at Media Portal

 

The second MediaPortal theme this holiday is the 2008 Christmas Theme by forum user "spragleknas." :

XmasMP2XmasMP1

For more information and the download, head over to the Christmas Skin 2008 MediaPortal Forum Thread

Download

 

Snapstream BeyondTV

Finally we have a Christmas Theme for Snapstream BeyondTV.  This one was created three years ago but still looks very nice:

XmasBTV1

XmasBTV2

BTV Christmas House Theme installation instructions and the download

 

Hope these add a little Christmas spirit to those of you who enjoy the holidays.  I was going to make a bah humbug theme as well, but haven't had the time to get it finished.  If you know of any other HTPC Holiday themes including those for other holidays let me know in the comments.  Merry Christmas from GeekTonic!