Minimise to Tray Issues

[Issih]

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 (2006-07-10)
MediaPortal Skin: Project Mayhem 3
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
.NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
Audio Codec: NVIDIA Audio Decoder
Video Codec: NVIDIA Video Decoder
CPU Type: AMD Athlon XP 2500+
Memory: 1 GB
Motherboard: FN41 (Shuttle Inc)
TV Card Model: Msi Mega Sky 580
TV Card Type: DVB
TV Card Driver: 5.1.2600.1043
Video Card Model: Nvidia Geforce 6800 (128 MB)
Video Card Driver: 8.4.2.1
Video Card Resolution: 1280x1024
Video Render Type: VMR9
Audio Card Model: NVIDIA(R) nForce(TM) Audio
Audio Card Driver: 6.14.442.30
Synopsis::

I am having various problems with the minimise to tray option.

With the minimise to tray and exclusive direct x options selected, I find that if live tv is playing (e.g. as a preview on the home screen) when you close the application, the screen isn't released. In essence media portal graphics remain on top of the desktop. Right clicking in the appropriate areas allows you to confirm that media portal has exited, as you can see some windows context menus - briefly.

Shutting down windows with media portal minimised is not possible. You have to explicitly shutdown media portal via the system tray and then try again.

Similarly choosing shutdown (as opposed to close) from within media portal does not shutdown the pc - this seems wrong to me - although it may be intentional

If you run the setup utility with media portal running and set up to minimise to tray (or already minimised), then after finish your alterations and click yeson the dialog box saying media portal has to be restarted, the program just gets minimised to tray and not actually closed and certainly isn't restarted. Worse still closing it explicitly from the system tray and then restarting it will not apply the changes you made in the setup utility - normally these are lost. The only way to alter settings is to manually close media portal prior to running the setup utility

Generally media portal is a brilliant application, and these are admittedly minor annoyances, but whilst I appreciate that the main thrust of media portal development is for stand alone htpcs, for those of us trying to use one machine for both htpc and general use, this option is very useful as it allows us to keep MP up and running so we don't miss scheduled recordings, and it would be fantastic if these issues could be ironed out.

Its entirely possible that once TV engine 3 comes along these problems won't really exist any more as recording scheduling occuring in a service will be a superb improvement! But given that any major change tends to bring instability, it may be worth investigating these issues anyway, if they can be solved easily anyway.

One final thing to mention, I, like many others used to suffer from the problems of tv stuttering with timeshifting on and audio sync problems with it off. I found the solution, at least in my case, to be to change the audio rendering device to be one of the Directsound options as opposed to the wave out devices. I mention this partially in the hope it may help some people out, (although I suspect there are better places to post for that) but mainly to point out that there doesn't appear to be a setting for the audio rendering device within the setup utility - it can only be changed from within media portal via the settings ->mytv ->audio renderer menu path. Perhaps this should be changed for consistency if nothing else

Many thanks to all the media portal developers for a fantastic application. If I ever get round to learning more about microsoft development (I'm a c++ and java nerd mainly) I may well try and join in, although I'm not sure I'd be good enough...thanks again.

Issih

btw, if these are already known about or just too minor to matter - feel free to tell me to piss off - ta

[brad.wilson]

I seem to have this issue as well, and I find it incredibly frustrating. I echo the comments that MP is a good product, but with this annoyance fixed it will be a great product.

[ronilse]

Hi,
This issue it's a known one & you can read about it in Mantis, no good solution found so far so issue it's still open.

Regards
Roy

[Issih]

That mantis bug addresses the first thing I mention (the non releasing of media portal graphics on close), but I'd be quite surprised if fixing that covered all the others - especially as everything else is still true even with exclusive directX mode off. The other 'bugs', when minimize to tray is enabled, are as follows:

1) Can't shutdown the pc if media portal is running whilst minimized to the system
tray
2) The shutdown command from within media portal doesn't work properly
3) Using the setup app to change settings, when you click yes in the dialog to
restart media portal and apply the new settings, media portal is not closed, and certainly does not restart
and if you manually kill it, the setting changes you made are lost.

[Taipan]

Originally Posted by Issih

there doesn't appear to be a setting for the audio rendering device within the setup utility - it can only be changed from within media portal via the settings ->mytv ->audio renderer menu path. Perhaps this should be changed for consistency if nothing else

This is a good point, and the fact that you can't set the audio renderer for "My TV" from within the setup utility has confused many new MP users....

Maybe you should open another thread on this specific topic - under "Feature Requests"?