Media Portal Vs. XBMC

[butchjr]

Why would anyone bother with MP as soon as XBMC is final?

MP is irritating to configure, and you have to have a keyboard ready whenever it crashes.
XBMC is configurable with keyboard, or with only the remote.

XBMC is good to go as soon as it's installed.
MP needs to install codecs, that needs to be configured. Almost nothing can be configured from inside the MP.

XBMC is avalible to more platforms.

I've used MP for a couple of years, and XBMC on my Xbox many years now. MP has only one advantage, it looks better. But with the new PMHD skin that was relased yesterday with XBMC beta 1, that changed aswell.

When reading through the forum here on MP, I can see that very much time is wasted with answearing very stupid questions.

Why don't the MP projects developers join the XBMC project and make it twice as good? Or why don't you just let go of MP1 and leave it as it is, and make MP2 more userfriendly?

Anyways, I am leaving MP alone from now on. I got tired of all the bugs, and a pretty bad UI, and the very bad configuration.

A big thanks to the developers though.

[Darre]

These ones always turn into flame wars..

Why would anyone bother with MP?
- I like the way MP is set up, I can configure some stuff inside, and the advanced stuff in a standalone app. Tried the XBMC way, and it works, but it really blows to do it all with a remote.

- Sure XBMC can play almost any filetype out of the box, and thats great.. But I wouldnt trade that for the ability to change and configure codecs to my liking.

- MP is created for windows, and if you want to use another OS, then MP is not for you.

- I don't think MP looks better; in the sense that I love all those cool skins that XBMC gets out.. Anyways with the aeon port and many other skins for MP, that doesnt bother me either. Also with MP2 things are going to look great

- Define stupid question.. Everybody was new once, even you. That beeing said I wish more people would use search before creating a new thread(or read the wiki).

- About devs joining:
1) XBMC wants to focus other places then MP.
2) MP1 is very close to beeing stable/finished.
3) MP2 this far on its way.

- The bugs I see in MP are getting fewer and fewer, and the only ones causing a crash now and then is a svn of a plugin. Without it MP runs for weeks without a reboot. I can agree that the UI isn't perfect, but with the configurable basic home of Aeon/Titanium I wouldnt want my HTPC any other way. Also MP2 will add to this once its in beta. That configuration you hate - I love it.

To sum it up.. We don't agree on a thing.. Guess that means people have different needs

[butchjr]

I don't want to start any wars.

When i search for movieinfo in MP it get right 60-70% of the time, the cover is right 30-40% of the time. In XBMC it's about 90% right in both cases.

When I add mp3files to my db i mp, sometimes it doesn't get added, of unknown reasons. The same files adds perfectly in XBMC.

And so on..

I easily trade the ability to custimize everything (MP), for the ability to play everything (XBMC). With MP much time is spent configuring and finding out why certain movies, or music doesn't play. With XBMC there is much more time left for actually watching a movie or listening to a song.

I really like MP, it's just that I like XBMC more, and i cant wait to install the new XBMC Live on my Harddrive. It's said to boot in 45 secs. It even plays great from a livecd.

I tried to add some visualizations to MP earlier today (and I'm not a new-don't-know-anything-user), and it just keeps crashing the configuration. It worked earlier, but suddely it stopped. And that is very common in MP. Stuff work, and then there is a new version (svn), and with it, something is fixed, and something that worked gets broken.

The feeling i get from XBMC is that when something is fixed, it don't break anything that was working.

[revs]

Why would anyone bother with MP as soon as XBMC is final?

Because it does everything I need.

MP is irritating to configure, and you have to have a keyboard ready whenever it crashes.
XBMC is configurable with keyboard, or with only the remote.

Its difficult to start with, but gets easier when you know what to do. Regarding the crashes...what crashes? Runs all day every day here, nice and stable. Surely when XBMC crashes you need a KB on your PC to relaunch it??

XBMC is good to go as soon as it's installed.
MP needs to install codecs, that needs to be configured. Almost nothing can be configured from inside the MP.

Being able to install and configure which codecs you want to use is a good thing I think! I dont want someone chosing codecs for me, I can decide which are best.

Also - how often do you mess about with the configuration? Surely you should just set it up once and away you go!?


Why don't the MP projects developers join the XBMC project and make it twice as good? Or why don't you just let go of MP1 and leave it as it is, and make MP2 more userfriendly?

Isnt the creator of MP is the same guy that created XBMC or somethign like that?


Anyway im interested to try XBMC, does it do the following:

• Let you specify the codec used for each type of video? e.g. video/dvd etc So I can use the PDVD codec and get HW Acceleration and a great image.
  
• Is there a plugin to allow using the MP TV Server?

At the end of the day - competition is great.

Once MeediOS and XBMC support the TVServer I think i'll give them both a try. All my TV goes via the TVServer, so I have to use MP currently. Not that its a bad thing, its works great.

[pilehave]

Good luck recording anything with XBMC...

[JackTramiel]

Exactly, the most missing part of XBMC right now is the tv part - for me. Then, surely its nice there is no need to mess with the codecs. On the other you have no GPU acceleration and need a powerfull system to watch hd content.

There is always something good and something bad about every mediacenter software. Just choose whats best for you, or whats comes closest to your expectations.

[Paranoid Delusion]

Regarding xbmc, most of Team-Mediaportal keep upto date on other htpc software, personally, whenever i use xbmc (have it currently installed on Dualboot XP and it crashes after a time playing video's), i have felt i'm not in control, it wants to do things the way the developer has instigated, not how i want it to be, even views regarding library\shares are confusing, in my opinion.

Regarding setup, believe both need keyboard to achieve optimum setup.

Notice they have only recently added M$ remote support as a sticky (long over due), this was for me, hard work finding that i needed our own irserversuite to be able to use xmbc.

As JackTramiel said, everyone has there own expectations, for me MP comes the closest to mine.

Regards

[graemef]

Why one or the other, I run MP on my main HTPC connected to my Fox box and digital tuner. This is my main TV for the house. I then have an xbox hooked up to every other TV in the house which enables me to watch movies, recorded TV and even foxtel on any TV in the house (using XBMC plugin for MP). I must admit I find XBMC crashes more often than MP (but boots so quick it is not too much of a problem). Having said that crashes are rare on both of them.
More power to both products I reckon, XBMC gives me sub $100 media centers whereever I want it and MP provides the workhorse for the backend.

[Topher5000]

I had MP 0.2.3.0 running perfectly. It played everything, subtitles worked perfectly & MP never crashed, even though it ran 24/7.
Then I figured I had too much useless stuff on my HTPC (from when I first built it) so I decided to start from scratch to try to get a leaner system & get standby working. I installed WinXP SP3 & MP 1.0 RC2. I had problems with a lot of files not playing & subtitles not working, so I decided to give XBMC for Windows a try.
It worked great out of the box & played what I thought was everything, but then I tried playing a 1080i .ts file & it was anything but smooth. I did a search on the XBMC site & found that it doesn't do hardware acceleration & probably never will (for understandable reasons), unless ffmpeg provides support for it.
So I'll stick with MP & work out the kinks. I may go back to 0.2.3.0, but the ability to use CoreAVC is a must on my system, an AMD X2 3800+ with an Asus EN8600GT silent video card.

[SpeedFreak]

Originally Posted by Topher5000

I had MP 0.2.3.0 running perfectly. ... I installed WinXP SP3 & MP 1.0 RC2. I had problems with a lot of files not playing & subtitles not working

My experience too.
0.2.3 was OK, even though there were a lot of quirks, but it's been downhill since then. Every new release breaks something new. I've completely given up using MP for TV, and lately I've had to stop using the movie database and use file view instead.

As for using MP without a keyboard, that has never been possible IMO. Apparently MP just doesn't target dedicated HTPCs.