Goodbye MediaPortal (2 Viewers)

[ryan20021982]

Some people just want an easy option - it's too easy for someone just to say "It's too hard!!"
#sigh#
"Nothing of value ever came easy" - that's what I learned on day one of engineering school, it's a good lesson to learn

In essence - f**k 'em
lol

Well said

 

[Swooosh]

Same for me, I sold the HTPC, now I'm using a DVB-Receiver with upscaling and the WD TV with 500GB external HDD. Took <1h to set up and costed <300€

I just dropped $1100 for parts for a HTPC, a MCE remote, and a new A/V receiver (I needed more HDMI in ports). Back in the day when I built fast cars, we had a saying - "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?" Those of us that wanted the speed spent the money - there's simply no way around it. You'll find a lot of parallels in life, and building/maintaining a HTPC is one of thise things. We have it much easier in that regard than the peioneers of the hobby did even two short years ago.

The HTPC costed more money, muuuuuuch time, had bugs and was slow. I think nobody will use a HTPC anymore when Sony or another company releases a all-in-one-device. The HTPC left me frustrated, while the 2 devices just work like a breeze

Everything worth doing takes time to do. If it had bugs, you didn't do enough research or preparation before assembling the system.

As far as waiting for Sony (or someone else) releasing a HTPC-in-a-box, you're wasting your time - there's no money in it for them. They're selling the crap outa standalone A/V receivers and DVD players, and at an extremely high margin of profit. Selling pre-assembled PCs simply doesn't make money.

In essence, building a HTPC takes some knowledge of hardware AND software, and how the two work together. There's certainly no shame in admitting that you simply don't have the chops for the task at hand, because not everybody does.

The original poster's message should probably be deleted (I mean seriously - look at his user ID).

Well what would you say if your brand new, expensive car would stutter every 2 minutes and you had to readjust the motor? and i'd pass you on my bike, costing 5x less?

the size of this board and the lenght of the threads show how poor htpc-solutions work while the number of my posts and my hardware-selection show how good i'm with computers and how much work i've spend for mp

i feel good passing you on my nice, black racing bike, with no useless stuff on it. whether it's in real life vs a mercedes or as a wd tv

 

[infinite.loop]

Seems to me that about every 3 weeks there's a post on this forum, from someone who has given up and walked away.

Indeed, and i still try to figure out what the purpose of those threads is.

 

[SpudR]

Just to keep the motoring analogy - would you expect to drive around at 100MPH in a car built by yourself, maintained by yourself with occasional help from other enthusiasts?
If the answer is YES, MP is for you - if not, get a DVD player...

Personally I WOULD!!!
(and my HTPC works )

 

[funkstar]

Seems to me that about every 3 weeks there's a post on this forum, from someone who has given up and walked away.

Indeed, and i still try to figure out what the purpose of those threads is.

Especially when the OP hasn't even logged in since creating this thread

 

[moab]

Seems to me that about every 3 weeks there's a post on this forum, from someone who has given up and walked away.

Indeed, and i still try to figure out what the purpose of those threads is.

Especially when the OP hasn't even logged in since creating this thread

This is a good question.
IMHO the purpose of the farewell posts is to leave feedback. The departing customers care enough to leave a reason for their departure. Any good organization values "rational" feedback from a lost customer. That feedback can be used as a guide in the development process. The power of self refection is critical to an organization as it is to an individual. Many users who leave have spent many hours of their valuable time working through issues and documenting them on the forum. Then when they leave other posters respond to them with hostility and profanity. This is un-professional, disrespectful and counter to the success of the project.
Moderator-can't we remove such negative posts?

 

[etheesdad]

Indeed, and i still try to figure out what the purpose of those threads is.

Especially when the OP hasn't even logged in since creating this thread

This is a good question.
IMHO the purpose of the farewell posts is to leave feedback. The departing customers care enough to leave a reason for their departure. Any good organization values "rational" feedback from a lost customer. That feedback can be used as a guide in the development process. The power of self refection is critical to an organization as it is to an individual. Many users who leave have spent many hours of their valuable time working through issues and documenting them on the forum. Then when they leave other posters respond to them with hostility and profanity. This is un-professional, disrespectful and counter to the success of the project.
Moderator-can't we remove such negative posts?

You're contradicting yourself.

Yes, feedback is important, and the feedback exists in the original posts and the discussion following them. You cant go hacking at the threads just because you dont like the tone (within reasonable limits), as you will cut the discussion short. Amidst some of the more irritated responses I have seen in "goodbye mediaportal" posts, some interesting points have been raised throughout.

Also, This is a Public forum, as opposed to a Developers forum. In other words, there's no imperative for donators and portal members to be "professional". The whole point of a public forum is for open, unbiased discussion, by anyone who feels they have something to contribute. "Professionalism" is not an issue, not should it be, (except, perhaps for the devs and mods, who generally do the right thing anyway).

 

[akiaki]

I gave up on the TV part too and am currently using dvbviewer. In my opinion, tvserver is a great idea but it just needs tweaking so it could work as advertised. It's too unstable.
I don't blame team mediaportal for that, when you think of it, it's amazing that it works as there is an infinite number of possible setups out there.
And all of you asking why it stutters, why this and why that, the answer is: IT'S BUILT ON WINDOWS!

 

[infinite.loop]

The point i find the most confusing, is that those, which leave the "good bye message" (or feedback as moab calls it ), never posted anything before in our forums.

So while those users struggle with configuration, or some other problem, they never consider to register an account here in the forums, and asked for help.
BUT once they give up, they "instantly" register an account and tell us that "MP sucks" (no, this thread is not that harsh).

In my opinion most of these users are not interested a bit to leave constructive feedback, and help to improove MediaPortal. They just need a vent for their furstration (or they would explode )


All of that is totally undrestandable. But very frustrating as you all can surely imagine.
The team does know that the first setos with mediaportal are quite tricky, and thats why we are constantly working on improovements (as you will see in 1.0.1 release news - soon). But big changes are not done over night.
Take the new deploytool for example, which allows you now to install/update MediaPortal with just one mouse click. From concept to final, it took us 2 years to get what we have now.

 

[infinite.loop]

I gave up on the TV part too and am currently using dvbviewer. In my opinion, tvserver is a great idea but it just needs tweaking so it could work as advertised. It's too unstable.
I don't blame team mediaportal for that, when you think of it, it's amazing that it works as there is an infinite number of possible setups out there.
And all of you asking why it stutters, why this and why that, the answer is: IT'S BUILT ON WINDOWS!

I am using the TV-Server @ home together with 4 multiseat clients since we released it to the public several years ago.

During the first year there were big issues, but i could not report any showstoper/annoying issues during the last 12 months.

What i found out while giving support, is that it many cases, "windows" is not really to blame for the issues (if the users did follow the requirements and installed all hotfixes ).

• Many users tend to install maaaaaany things which "sound cool/good", but at the end kill the system.
• Most of the time, codec-packs simply kill the whole system, because filters start to add themselfes to graphs, where you do not need them.
• Or (as recently seen in the german forum) very, very bad antenna cables causes stuttering LiveTV.
• Bad hardware (TV-Card) - german forum has a nice thread about that as well
• faulty drivers or firmware (tv-card/gfx-card/CAM)
• comaptibillity issues with mainboard (our developer ambass suffered from that recently with a hauppauge card)
• The list goes on, and on, and one.
• bad codecs
• users simply do not read the manual's at all.

I do not try to say here that the TV-Server is completelly bugfree, but saying that it is unstable is not correct either.

If we would sell HTPC''s with MediaPortal + all applications installed and configured, then we would have a lot less threads in our bugreport forums.
Actually this is why i once created the "Hardware selection help" section in our wiki.
With the idea that users which have fully functional HTPC's showcase them there.
And harware gets added to the list with informations from users about their experience with it.
That would help "newbies" a lot to get started.

sadl, noone really cares about this section either.