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Message: <blockquote data-quote="janjuul" data-source="post: 123910" data-attributes="member: 41091">Joboehl,I appreciate your answers to the questions around supported functions, through linking to threads in the discussion forums. But the development team have stated that these functions aren't supported from the outset.And please note: The apparent STB support is still experimental - playing around with different versions of plugins, which might work depending on what SVN build you got. Out of curiosity - does it require 2 MCE Receivers/blasters in order to work (1 receiver on the client side and 1 receiver/blaster on the server side) and what if I have it all installed on 1 machine ?  And the subtitle support is, like it is stated, not supported on the client side (and yes I can use VLC or something else but then the idea of MP is sort of lost...)and I'm still keen to see what standards of subtitles is supported.These 2 examples highlights my current concern, who and how is the new client/server architecture controlled. Where are the overall design document for the future ?? Already does is looks like we are carrying over the challenges from the past by making different ports of plugins in order to hopefully make it work at the back end. I see a risk of implementing new problems and instability issues if there isn't a clear definition of what and how is the different plugins ported, if at all ported. And how is the communication between a client side and a server side plugin defined and controlled in order to avoid instability introduced by different approaches. I now hope that you get a better feeling for my concern about the TVengine and stability and feature set.  We don't need Client/Server for the sake of it, but we need it to provide new features and functions(which unfortunately is rather unclear), and stability (but only if it isn't killed by plugins that un-intentionally brings the whole thing back to shaky circumstances.  You mention some very good future features as well. Your community metadata thinking is interesting, and it does again raise a question on where should data be stored ?  And I would love to see the Itunes way of browsing CDs ....Let me share with you what I have managed to grasp about the 2nd generation MediaExtenders.1st generation was primarely simple firmware based players(video, mp3, photo) capable of accessing remove files - all logisk was done in the local extender (a few of them included server software, primarely to help facilitate the communication and access to the relevant files on the PCs).2nd generation is providing more powerful output features (HDTV, soon BlueRay DVDs, etc.) but most important, they are capable of real 2 way interaction with Server side software. (skins, load plugins, access local media(photo memory) from other extenders, intelligent distribution of configurations, schedule serverside activity, etc). There is probably more to add, but they are generally providing better performance and dynamic menus, content and functionality.</blockquote>

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