Future directions of MediaPortal (3 Viewers)

[tourettes]

Hi,

2.2.0 is still shaky on the TV side (which we all know)

There is again this "all"/"everybody"-thing. MP is running very stable on my machine. I do not use my normal television anymore. I had left MP for 10 days to do my recordings on vacation and it did as espected.

See? A forum always reflects the unhappy people which have problems, not the bunch of people who are using a product without getting into trouble.

Flip.

Most of the old Tv Engine's issues are coming from the fact that many manufactures are producing goite bad quality BDA drivers. For example Nebula's DVB-T card was hanging pretty often and the Nova-T had no issues (both running in the same machine). Second issue that is messing up MP is people that are using something else than DX9 video cards.

But that's not to say that MP would be bug free, it has bugs and it will have bugs. Best way to get rid of those bugs is to write a detailed error report.

 

[CHli]

I'm happy with MP too ! Didn't use my TV's Tuner during the last 18th months. And I'm still up-to-date with latest SVN. I think the secret is MP need a fresh windows install and a very clean codecs installation.

For me the main future direction should be to get away from DirectShow and use VLC or any other open source media player with integrated codecs as the core for media playing.

Thanks

 

[janjuul]

Flipger,
Happy to hear that it is working for you.
But I might ask you to look around(in the forums) - the developers are also stating that the TVengine of 2.2.0 is not providing the desired functionality and stability.
That is why they are developing 3.0 TVengine

But back to my key question: Where is MediaPortal going ??
Sorry to repeat myself - but most people tend to shy away from that question.

I'm willing to take the bumpy ride with the Beta versions, if I know where we are going... but I find it hard to jump on a bus with no destination, and that no matter how nice the ride is presented in the brochure(we think it will be the best ride ever!!) Well tell us what the ride includes....

Yes, and you can say that I shouldn't jump the bus then. . . but that might also end up being the final conclusion. Unfortunately

 

[tourettes]

For me the main future direction should be to get away from DirectShow and use VLC or any other open source media player with integrated codecs as the core for media playing.

I think that would be a bad road to follow. Using codecs from VLC would mean that we would lose all hardware acceleration, and that's not something we want Also have you check how bad quality deinterlace VLC is doing? It's quite far a way from the HW deinterlace that todays ATI & Nvidia cards are providing.

 

[Inker]

I also don't understand what all the complaining is about. TV Engine 2 works rock solid for me, even though I do update svn's quite regularly. TV Engine 3 is also getting there, but its beta so it is to be expected (that's why I don't yet use it as the main way of watching TV). If you absolutely require a rock solid, never crashing solution then maybe you should use something else. As was said before, the forum does not provide a realistic view on people's experiences. Of course people will rather post their problems, then creating a new post saying how everything works fine.

I think your post could have been made more constructive. Why not post support request for your stability problems? Perhaps someone can help you. Why not provide ideas as feature request for your extender functionality? Why not gather information from the forums regarding subtitles and ask for their status?

You talk about "willing to put up" with things "if this and that". Well, this is an open source project. Everybody works on it in there free time, and free of charge. Quite frankly this sounds harsh and bit like MP ows you something. As you know, that is not the case, I also don't believe it was your intention. But certain features might be important to you (subtitles, STB, etc.) while they are of zero concern to others (like me). Other features might be important to me, but not to you. Keep that in mind. Developers are obviously more inclined to work on what is most important to them, and only then work towards what other people want.

You say information is hard to find. Well why not help out with it then. Collect the various bits and pieces out of those forum posts and put them in the wiki. Don't always rely on other people.

To your question, heres where I see MP is headed.
Medium Term:
- TV Engine 3 fully integrated
Long Term:
- rewrite of many parts of the core which will handle manly messaging between plugins (everything is a plugin), making it minimalistic and thus more flexible. Regarding this, there are talks with the MeediOS team to possible combine forces. This is what is refered to as MPNG.
- integration of a WPF GUI system (with the new core the gui system will be exchangable, to allow for example for an alternative html GUI)

 

[Roberdin]

Are you capable of seeing Sky via a DVB card ?
I need a STB because my provider is linking the card with the actual receiver (no option of using a DVB card to replace my Sat-box).

I'm pretty sure I could use a DVB-S/DVB-S2 card plus CAM if I wanted to.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I'm pretty sure I could use a DVB-S/DVB-S2 card plus CAM if I wanted to

Everywhere i have looked say's no on that one, it's hardcoded into STB, and unless sky authorise it, will not work, and are they going to do that, the answer is no.

 

[Smirnuff]

I'm pretty sure I could use a DVB-S/DVB-S2 card plus CAM if I wanted to

We used to be able to do this with standard DVB-S, not sure what the situation is with DVB-S2. Around 18 months ago I had a FireDTV-S, Dragon CAM and a valid Sky Digital subscription card and was able to view PPV Sky programmes in perfect quality within MP. Despite all this, the Sky+ box still offered a better solution for me so I no longer own the FireDTV-S.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I had a FireDTV-S, Dragon CAM and a valid Sky Digital subscription card and was able to view PPV Sky programmes in perfect quality

Stand corrected

Sorry last article i read, was the card interacted with 2 chips on the stb and therefore would not work with DVB-S.

 

[dubstar]

Joboehl,

We really need a documented future path for Mediaportal . . .
It will provide us all with a clear picture of where MediaPortal is going, and it will also enable us to see if it includes the functions relevant to each of us. If I see key functions missing, then I might as well start to look for other options and forget about MediaPortal. I don't hope that I will get to that conclusion.

This is something I would like to happen, and i'm sure it would help if new devs wanted to get involved.

Take a look at how mythtv development is documented.

http://svn.mythtv.org/trac/milestone/0.21

Its not going to make media portal a better program but it just seems a more stuctured way of working and allows people to track progress a little better.

I love media portal and the reason i use it instead of my mythtv box is for the eye candy and animated screen. Myth is much more stable and feature packed, and everything that is a beta or in the feature requests for media portal is already implimented in mythtv and rocksolid so for those who are desperate for that stability there is always the option for a change to a completely free os and mythtv:

http://g-ding.tv/

http://www.mysettopbox.tv/

http://www.mythtv.org/

There are a number of choices for htpc software, and I choose media portal.