I cannot count the man hours I spent on mediaportal over the last 5 years, but I'm sure it must be over 1,000, which even on minimum wage represents a hefty investment despite it theoretically being free. Eventually at the start of this year I'd had enough of the 3-4 times a week, reboots and kids "daddy can you fix the tv" whining so I migrated to windows 7 media centre. The pros are it works, rarely crashes and takes up minimal time to config. The cons are some feature losses and clients cannot be other pc's (needs to be xbox or extenders).
At the end of the day though if a system is unreliable it really doesn't matter how many features it has. I had grown to truly loathe mediaportal despite even coding for a few weeks on a plugin at one point. Every new version bought new features and new bugs to the point where it just became pointless and directionless. Everyone appreciates the free time the devs put in, but it seems to have remained as a hobbyist project for years on end. Sure it works but not reliably enough that you can just turn it on and forget about it as you would any set top box. MCE for me feels and looks pro and having traversed through xbmc -> mythtv -> mediaportal -> mce, I have hopefully found a system that I do not need to tinker with and can rely on like a set-top box.
I ought to write a blog on how to config mce, as there was a frustrating learning curve, and when I get the time, I may well do so. Suffice to say it does everything MP did for me, the clients aren't perfect (cat6 to 2 xboxs + extender), though TV looks a lot better (smoother) on MCE.
PS - I also just abandoned firefox after 6+ years as it has also become too buggy and memory leaky, back on ie9. MS annoy the $h1t outta me, but their progs are now, in 2011, at least fairly robust and reliable. Also got into apple's stuff (iphone/ipad) for same reason of reliability, I no longer care about feature-sets as without reliability they are meaningless, I'd far rather have a 100% reliable mini than a ferrari that broke down every other day!
At the end of the day though if a system is unreliable it really doesn't matter how many features it has. I had grown to truly loathe mediaportal despite even coding for a few weeks on a plugin at one point. Every new version bought new features and new bugs to the point where it just became pointless and directionless. Everyone appreciates the free time the devs put in, but it seems to have remained as a hobbyist project for years on end. Sure it works but not reliably enough that you can just turn it on and forget about it as you would any set top box. MCE for me feels and looks pro and having traversed through xbmc -> mythtv -> mediaportal -> mce, I have hopefully found a system that I do not need to tinker with and can rely on like a set-top box.
I ought to write a blog on how to config mce, as there was a frustrating learning curve, and when I get the time, I may well do so. Suffice to say it does everything MP did for me, the clients aren't perfect (cat6 to 2 xboxs + extender), though TV looks a lot better (smoother) on MCE.
PS - I also just abandoned firefox after 6+ years as it has also become too buggy and memory leaky, back on ie9. MS annoy the $h1t outta me, but their progs are now, in 2011, at least fairly robust and reliable. Also got into apple's stuff (iphone/ipad) for same reason of reliability, I no longer care about feature-sets as without reliability they are meaningless, I'd far rather have a 100% reliable mini than a ferrari that broke down every other day!
Sweden
