Goodbye but not totally gone, from South-Africa

[geov]

Be warned this is a long post, but please read it as it will probably be the last post I’m submitting for a while…

My time spending hours on Media-Portal is coming to an end, especially now that my life is taking on a new direction. As everyone knows Media-Portal is a very addictive and time-consuming hobby, which could also cost a lot of money. I’ve finally submitted to the idea that there is more to life than spending all my time on my hobbies, and have decided to get married and start a family. I’m also starting a new business with my wife to be; so all my time is now flowing into the business.

I will still be around, but will probably only keep an eye on how media-portal is going and will not test any new functionality or releases for a while. As far as my Media-Portal experience goes I thought I would give a short rendition of my time (only 2year, but it feels like a life-time) with Media Portal and everything that I experienced up to this point building my HTPC. This is aimed mainly at South-African users (future and present), but everyone else are welcome to read it and hopefully can associate with some of my experiences building an HTPC using this excellent but frustrating product. Also please note that everything was written in good humour and with tong-in-cheek and should not be taken up too seriously.

As a South-African you must understand that a 2year back not many people even heard the term HTPC or anything related to entertainment PC’s. I’ve been in the IT industry for over 12 years and have done everything from programming in C++, VB, to build Oracle and SQL-Server databases, and have always seen myself as technology literate. Two years back I was still entertained my guests by showing WinAmp visualizations and playing MP3 ‘s through my laptop whenever I had a party at my house. Needless to say I was always a hit because of all the SUPERIOR technology that I was using, what a joke

Anyway, I was browsing the web for PC-reviews and stumbled on a product called “Pinnacle ShowCenter” that could stream media over a network. Now that impressed me, I would be able to use a remote to listen to music, see everything on my TV and surf the web. The only problem was that the Pinnacle product was not available in South Africa, I did not have a network and I was using dialup Internet. I mentioned to one of my colleagues (an accountant) that I was looking into the streaming of media and he told me that he had a nephew from the USA that left his Xbox there after the holiday and that I could have it if I wanted it. He mentioned that his nephew said something about it streaming media, so I agreed to take it and see what it could do. He delivered it to me two days later, and to my surprise it was not an Xbox but a XC-Cube from AOpen. It was a very old product, and was still running with a Pentium4 processor with 250mb and a really crappy TV-Card.

I installed MCE2005 on the XC-Cube and tried to get the TV-card to work, which it did not. I then bought a Hauppauge PVR500 MCE edition TV-Card, which barely fitted into the XC-Cube. The XC-Cube had a TV-out, so I connected it to my 21inch (51cm) TV, which really looked like @$%!!. I convinced myself that I needed a bigger and better TV because the XC-Cube running MCE2005 was my future, ha! ha! Anyway, to follow was the 42inch (107cm) plasma TV and this time I was impressed except that the quality was still @$%!! and the XC-Cube would keep overheating and crashing on me all the time. I gave up on using the TV-functionality and just used it to watch DVD’s and listen to music. My girlfriend at that stage hated it, mainly because there were wires all over the place and with the cover off all the time the XC-cube looked like a broken cassette-player (girlfriends words ). Anyway, to follow the XC-cube was a normal tower PC, which was hidden inside the cupboard so that my girlfriend could stop complaining. The XC-cube was stripped down for parts, and the box was thrown in the trashcan.

Being well into the HTPC technology, I decided to see if there were any other products out there that would give me more flexibility than MCE2005. I looked at a lot of products, but the only one that really stood out from the rest was “Media Portal”, it was awesome to look at and the customisability was just wonderful. I was still not using the TV functionality and could not understand how so many users were actually using it successfully, so I decided to give it another try. At this stage there wasn’t a TV3 only the standard TV2 functionality.

I had to overcome three challenges before I could use TV2, 1st I had to get the TV card to show something, and with Media-Portal this was not very obvious. Getting the TV-Card to find analogue channels was easy enough, but to get it to work with my Satellite-Decoder was another story. With MCE2005 I could just started the wizard and tell it that I was using the composite-input, MCE would then test the remote-blaster to the decoder and in a few seconds I was watching TV and changing channels without a problem. With Media-Portal there was some sort of setup-wizard, but it seemed more like a setup-baboon so I found it useless. After searching and receiving some help on the forum I figured out that I needed to change the channels to external, so at last I had a working TV….but the quality was again @$%!!. Luckily some changes were made to TV2 that improved all the Hauppauge cards output quality, so I was happy to continue. My 2nd challenge was to get the remote blasters to work so that I could change the channels. In MCE2005 once again there was the setup-wizard, but in Media-Portal there wasn’t even a setup-baboon or even the functionality to change channels via the MCE remote-blasters. After some time I found a plug-in called “MCE-Blaster” (something like that), so I was faced with the pleasant task of installing plug-ins for MediaPortal, I mean how difficult could it be to just manually copy the files into the correct folders? Hell did I miss the MCE2005 plug-in installers. Anyway, I got that working and moved on to my 3rd challenge, which was the EPG (program-guides). Being in South Africa there was no supplier that would give you the detail you need for your HTPC. In actuality, South Africa is a country of opportunity….the opportunity for businesses to monopolise and bully the consumers. The only supplier of proper television is MultiChoice, which charge ridiculous monthly rates and refuse to provide EPG data to its consumers. Luckily for me there were a few daring users that produced an XMLTV file by means of extracting it from the MultiChoice website. Even after being sued by MultiChoice there are still a few people that provide these XMLTV files for free, so my last problem was solved.

Once the TV functionality was working it would have been smooth sailing from there on, but like most people I got hooked into the SVN patches that are being released almost every day and tested everything that was released. I also wanted a better looking and performing HTPC with better sound and a dedicated Internet connection. So what followed in the year after finding Media-Portal can just be described as madness. It started with a new “ThermalRock Mystic” HTPC box, then a new processor, motherboard, memory, CPU-Cooler, remote keyboard and mouse. I then installed a full Ethernet and wireless network into my house, after which the dedicated Internet connection followed. Then my sound-system was upgraded, with a new Amplifier, Speakers and finally a good Sound Card.

It’s impossible for me to write about everything that I experienced and will therefore cut an already long post short and leave with my final thought of Media-Portal and what I like and dislike about it. I don’t expect any action out of this; it’s just my experience and opinion that I’m sharing…..

I will start with one of the biggest architecture changes that were started since I joined Media-Portal user-group 1year ago, the TV3 Server. I can see how it makes sense to have a separate service that can record in the background, as well as the ability to stream TV over the network if one requires the functionality, but I just cant relate to the way it is being implemented. I think installing a database like SQL-Server, even if it is the Express Edition, is just too much of overkill for what is being done. Also I believe the service to record in the background should be lumped together with Media-Portal and TV2, and that the TV-streaming functionality in TV3 should be an add-on for those that want to stream over the network. Further I don’t like the fact that time-shifting is on all the time, especially if a dedicated HTPC that is always on has the hard-drive ticking away in the background. No matter what everyone says, I have lost to many hard-drives because of over-use and heating on servers to believe that it won’t have an impact in the long run. I also understand that future releases of Media-Portal will discontinue TV2 and that only TV3 will be available, well as stated earlier I think TV3 should only consist of the streaming component and should not replace TV2.

The next subject is that of all the new functionality being released all the time, well other than the rest of the users I like the fact that we can be involved in testing the new SVN’s and RC’s that are released. I also believe that people will lose interest in contributing in Media-Portal testing if all the development activity were to halt online, only because the developers are working on a new release in the background where nobody can see what is happening.

Other than TV3 I think Media-Portal is a great piece of software and the developers should be very proud of themselves because they have delivered an exceptional product that beats MCE2005, Vista, MythTV and any other product out there.

From a sunny “Cape Town”, “South Africa”

[Paranoid Delusion]

Nice post geov

Hope everything works out well for you and your wife in your new venture.

Regards

[tomtom21000]

Originally Posted by geov

My girlfriend at that stage hated it, mainly because there were wires all over the place and with the cover off all the time the XC-cube looked like a broken cassette-player (girlfriends words ).

Must be a very ancient genetic programm, that makes girlfriends all over the world allergic on cables, noise from htpc´s and the such in livingrooms

Don´t know if this is still the same girl you are going to marry now, but however all the best for you!


tomtom

Let´s see how long your good intentions last. Not so easy to overcome the addiction

[rekenaar]

I think there are only three or four active participating South African members here. Sad to lose you.

Maybe you can get your wife-to-be also hooked on MP and then you can still participate...between 22:00 and 23:00...you know, all business taken care of, kids asleep, etc, etc.

On a serious note - good luck. Although I am married for 9 years now, my girl is 23 months and my boy is 9 months. Would not trade my current lifestyle for anything else. I am sure you will also learn to love it.

And yes, my kids are fast asleep now. Wife surfing the net next to me. Is that good planning or what?

[Gixxer]

nice post !!

hope to see you around every now and again.

good luck in your new direction.

[McChots]

Hey Geov

Good luck for the future.

[Bobb25]

Originally Posted by rekenaar

I think there are only three or four active participating South African members here. Sad to lose you.

Maybe you can get your wife-to-be also hooked on MP and then you can still participate...between 22:00 and 23:00...you know, all business taken care of, kids asleep, etc, etc.

On a serious note - good luck. Although I am married for 9 years now, my girl is 23 months and my boy is 9 months. Would not trade my current lifestyle for anything else. I am sure you will also learn to love it.

And yes, my kids are fast asleep now. Wife surfing the net next to me. Is that good planning or what?

Lol. All i did was introduce the wife to Facebook... now she spends more time on the net than i do! With a kid on the way though, i expect our available free online time to be reduced!

[geov]

Thanks for all the kind words....I will try my best to make a turn now and then.