First impressions (1 Viewer)

[Beechus]

Hey all,

I built my first HTPC last week, as you may or may not have read in my HTPC build thread. My intention is to use MediaPortal. It has some brilliant features, and some of the plugins are far superior to what other packages offer (e.g. TV-Series)

However, i have one major gripe with the software, which i'd like express here, and get some answers.

All of my media is stored on another machine, so is accessed via SMB shares. Other HTPC software has no problems with this....

Media portal however, is VERY slow whenever it comes to loading files. e.g. If i click Videos, it takes a good 15-20 seconds to load 30 movies, then a varying amount of time to start playing the file i want to. It gets so frustrating at times that i just plug in a mouse and bypass media portal all together!

This is a real shame, because apart from the very slow loading times, media portal rocks!

Can anyone help me with this problem?

 

[atomtbomb]

Unfortunately I can't help you, but I'm bumping your thread to acknowledge that I have the same issue. Granted, my movies folder currently has 460 items in it, but when viewing the folder through Explorer it loads in less than a second. Loading that directory with Mediaportal takes nearly 15. This is over a Gigabit network, and network usage doesn't even come close to being maxed out. So I'm not sure what the hang up is. Would be great if it could be made more efficient.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

If they are in the database, change view to title, that should speed things for you.

 

[atomtbomb]

If they are in the database, change view to title, that should speed things for you.

Thanks for the tip, that does improve the load time significantly for movies in the DB.

I prefer the shares view, since it allows sorting by folders, but it's nice to have options.

 

[sharaleo]

Yep, I have this issue as well.

I have always experienced this, on XP and Vista, mutiple versions and SVNs, none of which seem to make a difference.

There was a fix, around deleting a directory database file from memory, but the problem still re-occurs.

I believe MediaPortal just handles SMB shares poorly.

In comparison, XBMC, which I was using prior to moving to an HTPC, is always lightning fast, regardless of directory contents.