best app ever

[graigchq]

I just wanted to thank all of you here that develop this AMAzing peice of software, i'm truly impressed.

Here's a bit of background...

So my housemate is a linux geek, he loves it, i dabble with ubuntu, but i play loads of games on my rig, so i'm sticking with windows, i'm also helpdesk support, so it pays to use the same OS at home as i do at work.

He set up Myth on his machine, as our lving room entertainment, and it really is quite impressive. He has a Leadtek DTV USB dongle, and it just kicks ass. The remote login and set up of scheduled programmes is amazing.

So i wanted some of that...

I had an old WinTV 878-based card lying around, and i had been using it to watch TV on ym PC upstairs, as the windows client for MythTV is really buggy and quite frankly naff.

The reason i started lookign for something else was when i bought a nice new 1440x900 widescreen panel, i would get black bars left and right, and also a top and bottom, the WinTV2000 program just isnt good enough to zoom in. I tried VLC player, with limited success, but couldn't get it to change from PAL-I to PAL-N.

So i googled 'WinTV alternatives', found a page for forcing the software MPEG-2 decoders to run for my card, then found MediaPortal.

I've just finished getting it working, had some audio-sync issues, which is why i signed up to the forums to get some help, but playing with my sound card drivers, i found that using the recording options rather than the direct line in volume, forces the Nvidia decoder to sync with the video, rather than passing the stream directly out of the speakers, and VOILA, it works.

Need to play around with the Nvidia Purevideo settings to get some nice de-interlacing and fullscreen effects, but yeah, i'm WELL impressed, the interface screams of MythTV, (or is it the other way round LOL) which also screams of MCE, but hey, it works for me, looks great, and finally i can zoom into the content to remove the black bars and get the full 16:10 aspect out of my monitor.

Great app, great help pages and forum threads and all in all, now i dont have any problems with it, i'm very happy to come and say thanks to everyone for their hard work in bringing this OSS app to my attention.

I'll keep it up to date, and really hope that everyone else loves it as much as me.

Great work lads and ladettes, you got my vote!!!