[dmeglio]

I'd just like to respond to a couple of the replies...

sadly that wont even work with MCE flawlessly, because of the "structure" of the DVD-menus.
everyone loves to "tweak" their menu......

I'm not going to dispute that, because I don't know for sure. However, I personally have never had any major issues. Yes, there is the occasional glitch (which I also have on my standalone DVD player), but with MP I have some major issues. With my Simspons DVD, the screen got all pixelated (random colors, etc. it almost looked like what my digital cable does when it encounters some bad data over the line). Then, the DVD feature froze, as did MP as a whole. That's something I've yet to experience in MCE. Could it happen? I won't answer since I don't know. All I do know is DVDs that work fine in MCE and Media Player fail in MP.

the "main problem" is the core of MediaPortal. too much is handled inside the core.
so if you change something to fix bug A, this causes features X, Y, Z to break, or introduces 5 more new bugs.....
its like playing ::mikado::

I understand this when it comes to "bug fix 1 causes bugs 2 and 3" however, when you're in RC, I don't think I should see SVN comments like "MP now supports the startup parameter /windowed to force a windowed start" or "Add grabbing/storing the parental rating info from DVB-EPG" or "added DM140GINK driver for MSI Media Live and Hiper HMC-2K53A Barebones" each one may have only been 1 line of code, but they are *features* not bug fixes. By definition "Release Candidate" means "if nothing is broken, this is the final version." So there should be no new features at that point. They could introduce issues. Why not release 0.2.3 as 100% (well 99%) stable, THEN add these new features? I'm not saying they're bad features, just that they should wait until after 0.2.3 is released.

Yes it could be easier to setup, but having said that you can take it too far as Microsoft often do and treat the end-user as an idiot and assume what is best for them. I like being able to get to the MP setup and see how things are setup and working.

I hear you and 100% agree. However, why not deal with both sets of users? I think MP has the right idea, just bad execution. The MP config tool is great for pros, but the wizard should be better. Make the wizard better, but don't eliminate the config tool. I'm not talking about options like "hide XP balloon tooltips" but more like, why do I have to jump through hoops to setup an EPG where as in MCE, I just enter my zip code? Or, why can't it automatically detect I'm in the US and set my cards to an NTSC frame rate/resolution (I've spent countless hours wondering why the picture didn't work only to realize it's using a PAL resolution and frame rate). Why can't My Weather find the images for my zip code on weather.com automatically? Those kind of things.

as Infinity Loop hinted at, I am a bit sad that we have had quite a few posters reply with "I'm a programmer..." and not offer any help if they can.

Two things here. Just because you're a programmer doesn't mean you can help on MP. I know little/nothing about DirectX programming, and even less about DirectShow. So I can't add too much value to MP. Additionally, just because I'm a programmer doesn't mean I have tons of free time. I have a job, a girlfriend, etc. Plus, if we want to get right down to it, I did make a contribution to MP to make My News integrate with IE7's RSS API. I submitted it March 31st. To date, it still has not been added to the project and it just sits on SourceForge. So that kind of did not encourage me to do too much other work... If I thought I could add value to the MP team, I probably would donate some time.

I think MP has a lot of potential. When people say "open source is different" I disagree. Any piece of software, free or pay, is about user satisfaction. Whether you make money through selling software or donations, you still need happy customers. I think MP could become a product that is the best DVR software there is. Right now though, I think it tries to satisfy everyone by having every possible feature while ignoring the obvious stuff. Hopefully that'll change in the not too distant future.