Does anybody have MP working without any problems? (1 Viewer)

[guytpetj]

I have 2 computers running with MediaPortal, one at home and one at work (my second home, I spend 3 weeks a month in a gas and oil exploration camp somewhere in the middle of the Australian desert).

My home HTPC is running 24/7, and does a lot of hard work. It has a WAF factor of 10/10. The wife and kids never managed to crash MP or the computer and it has been running solid for the last 18 months. On this PC I’m still running MP 0.1.1.1. This version is extremely stable for analog tuner cards and for some stupid reason it does work on a 2 monitor environment. Watching TV or movies on the big screen using MP and surfing the net on the small screen, all at the same time.

The wife records 2 or 3 channels at the same time every evening, whilst watching recorded TV on the big screen (and sometimes surfing the net on the small screen). The kids are watching recorded TV using the D-link DSM-320 on their TV. All at the same time.

My second HTPC at work is my experimenting machine. I always run the latest CVS on this. Since this pc does not require a WAF I can play and configure it to the max, but except for the occasional error introduced by CVS this machine runs stable.

 

[Forgotten Illustrator]

When I first start playing around with Media portal. The computer was always freezing/shuddering and then I had to reboot. Here I was thinking it was the program in itself. So I stop using if for a while, but as I sat back and started thinking about all the tweaking and playing around I did. The decision was made to give it another go and I’ve never looked back.

One Problem that I fixed: TV lockup.
When I was using TV “mode†it wound only last for about 1 day, if that before locking up. One day I had the S**ts and went to pull out the DVB card and found the RF section of the card was just too hot for my liking. So I when down to locate eclectic shop and purchase myself a little heat sink and transfer compound. Mounted it, every since that the TV has never locked up and I’ve had the TV on nonstop and recording (on/off) for over a week without a lockup.

Yes I have smooth playback too on TV and DVD. Just had to have the right video/audio codec selected for my system.

Mind u I only use these function, TV, Video (DVD ISO), Pictures and weather. But they all work fine with out any major bugs.

 

[speedypancake]

OK - I give in!

OK - there seem to be enough of you out there using MP successfully to encourage me to have another go. As long as the rest of the family will be patient with me!


Thanks to everyone for your input.

 

[knutinh]

For example:

1. The OS is set to use one refresh rate always. A DVD-player would use the frame-rate of the content being played and the TV would detect this. This is the number one cause for jerky playback when not using a refresh rate on the display that is a multiple of the frame rate of any material being played.

I think it would be possible and not that hard to write a plugin for MediaPortal that would change video cards refresh rate (and when using tv-out PAL/NTSC/SECAN mode) depending on the refresh rate of the video file.

I have seen people doing this. Evidently, ffdshow can run a batch script upon detection of framerate?

Be aware that many flatscreen tellys dont have native variable framerate, they`ll just do internal frame-rate-conversion. But for those who do, this could be a really good quality improver.

Btw, I have the same "problems" as is reported here. People in my household complain that:
*channel switching is slower than the telly in itself
*a bug that doesnt allow resuming if MP is suspended in fullscreen tv mode
*DVD playback is really flaky, sometimes I have to change codecs and dvd menu systems for a while
*wrong automatic aspect ratio with the only stable tv codec setup I could find
*error messages popping up in my tv about "no signal"

On the positive side, application crashes are far fewer now than before. And it works really great for watching downloaded tv-series.

Family and friends are the real acid test because they dont have the samme geeky fascination with MP as us =) This means that if any other people in the household switched on the tv, the tv cable will usually be moved from the HTPC to the tv direct in meaning that MP is removed from the equation =)

regards
Knut

 

[Brocklander]

Re: OK - I give in!

OK - there seem to be enough of you out there using MP successfully to encourage me to have another go. As long as the rest of the family will be patient with me!

Here's a hint - get everything working perfectly first, THEN introduce it to the family. Not only do you ensure you get a perfectly working system when you want to record that first program, but your family doesn't get a bad first impression and wonder what the hell you were thinking

 

[wewe]

thanks for the hint Brocklander ... but it's too late ... :roll:

I think the problem is that when you try everything out in the labs, hooked to a PC monitor, everything seems to work good. But then in the daily use, hooked to the (one and only TV), some problems that you didn't realize before, suddely are show stoppers.

I would be interested in how many people in this forum are really using MP as the one-and-only livin'room family TV ... maybe one day I start a poll ...


thanks+regards
WeWe

 

[guytpetj]

I would be interested in how many people in this forum are really using MP as the one-and-only livin'room family TV ... maybe one day I start a poll ...

I/We do

 

[mrmojo666]

i have 31/01 CVS, the MP seems stable, but when record something by guide and in the sametime play a avi or a old recording Mp crash. I use Mp like PVR with powerscheduler plug-in have many many problems, if not force shoutdown mp don't hibernate system but rise one exception, if i FORCE seem like all ok but when wake up system (by powerschedulr or system button) 1 time on 3 Mp crash and i'm not able to record. With Mp1.3 the hibernation and wakeup and recording was OK.

My system like this AMD 64 3000+ 512 ddr400 ATI 9600 AGP ABIT AV8
hdd samsung 160 SATA PVR150MCE, WINXP PRO. lastest driver for all.

 

[Brocklander]

I would be interested in how many people in this forum are really using MP as the one-and-only livin'room family TV ... maybe one day I start a poll ...

I/We do

We do too! Only one cable runs from the aerial, straight to the HTPC 8)

thanks for the hint Brocklander ... but it's too late ... :roll:

Yeah it was too late for me too :?

 

[Commodore 64]

We use Media Portal and SageTV 4 at the moment. SageTV 4 is only used to record TV.

For TV watching, movie watching, DVD watching and music all we use is Media Portal. The WAF for MP is pretty high here.