i just installed MCE 2005 (1 Viewer)

[Anonymous]

just to mess around with it

i have to say im impressed.

is there any plans to implement the standard features in mce?

for example

o Wizard upon first startup
o Animated menus
o Automatic video thumbnails
o Automated thumbnail creation
o Adding Folders via Interface
o Toggling more options through the Gui?

those seem to be my biggest desires/jealousies of MCE

 

[MrMario64]

work another week with it and the fast menu's and animations sweetness soon fade away and the lack of nice features will take over.

 

[Frodo]

Mario is right
MCE2005 is prolly the best commercial HTPC application there is
its very easy to setup, very user friendly, works good and is stable
however in my opinion its a bit limited. MP has almost all functions MCE2005 has, but these functions are in general more advanced.
But i agree that we still have a long way to go;-)
Frodo

 

[Anonymous]

One of the major things about Media Portal is the high configureable interface.. You can use all sets of hardware, drivers, and the best part is that you can choose what to use. The Good way we have TV. At media center the only thing u can do is to get the whole package. In MP you can choose you channels and so on. The same here with the radio, online streaming and so on. Im not familier with the MCE and MP in TV mode. couse i never used it becouse i didnt got time to install the TV card yet.

1.
But i agree with the settings part of MCE is great in GUI mode.

2.
Another thing is was seing in MCE that i really miss in MP is the Volume control. When you turn up/down there is a volume bar on the screen...

3.
I also think that the animation part of MCE is great looks really nice.. Maybe make the avaibility of changing between Animation and no Animation will be a great feature.

Best Regards
Thomas Nissen

 

[Anonymous]

I am sure that MCE is great but MediaPortal is the only viable option for countries outside UK, USA and a couple more... I live in Holland and there is a dutch version of MCE but I have read some reviews and yes it looks great, easy and all that, but shit happens as well and not all the stuff actually work (EGP for example can be a nightmare..) It hangs, freezes as well..

And.... Bloody expensive!! At least in Holland you do not have to buy a complete new PC as you can have the kit, but 200 to 300 euros for a fancy remote and additional Front end is a tad on the high price..

I think MP is great because of all the poeple involved and it really does mean infinite possibilities..

As for the Set up... it could indeed be improved but because it MP is so expansive, the set up is not as simple as MCE. Comes down to more options I guess. But mainly it is due to the variety of Hardware it actually supports!! MCE can be simple, yes, but this is becuase it supports only 1 or 2 TV cards and comes with it's own remote.. If MP only supported, say PVR 250 and PVR 350, then I am certain that you would be all set up in about 2 clicks....

My 2 cents anyway

 

[Anonymous]

Actually the EPG for the UK is shit as well, the country supported correctly for EPG is the US (as usual)

Thats MS for ya ;p

 

[Anonymous]

iam in the process of selecting hardware to build my htpc. i too am looking at mce2005 as a possible choice. I prefer mp at the moment. it is rough around the edges but it is very new too. i believe in 6 months this will be a polished stable project.

i am trying to be careful to purchase hardware that will work with allthe major htpc software out at the moment. i have played with meedio, media portal, and mce2004. i like media portal the best. it was eaisest to configure and worked well with all my xvid/divx videos. i had numerous codec issues with meedio, i have since resolved these and it is not directly meedios fault but with the same codecs, mp played everything that meedio could not.

what i liked best in meedio was the tv series plugin that downloaded data form tvtome.com on each episode in a series. that was a beautiful plugin and i miss it. i hope someone will take a look at that feature and develop a similar plugin for mp.

frodo,
have u used mce2005? i the svideo playback better than in media portal? i want to buy the 150mce card but i have read reports that svideo is not working in mp. will this be resolved in the next build?

i am planing to start putting to gether a dedicated pc for tv viewing. i like mp because it is open source and hopefully will use opensource codecs etc. i do not like that programs recorded in mce2005 with the new broadcast flag will not be able to be played back on anything except the pc it was recorded on. i want to be able to playback my recordings when and how i choose. this is why i support media portal.

i am not a programmer, i am a pc technician. i cannot contibute other than reporting bugs and helping others on the forum. I can contribute money to the project and will do so in the next week (wed). i will contribute what i can when i can. I really want to see this app grow to become great. i like that it uses folder structure as well as xml or id3 tag info. mce does not, and meedio does not easily either. i just want to match the live tv side of things with the same level as mce2005 which i hear is quite good.

i really appreciate the hard work and effort that is put into media portal. I also think the interface should be rethought out a bit, so it is not just a clone of mce. i want to see more skins as some people think mp is just a poor mans mce at first glance. i know that is not true and i really like it best so far. good luck and i will be here daily to help in anyway i can...

 

[Anonymous]

As MCE gets more press HTPC will move from the more technologically gifted to the everyday user. Yes having all the options we have is nice, but it can also be intimidating to the people that don't spend there free time playing with code and calling it fun. I would like to see the wizards be more available and even automatically come up after the first install. This would make MP much less intimidating to the new users, and make them more likely to leave MCE. It is like the same way AOL despite the fact it is a bloated piece of crap, still is the largest ISP in the world. The made the setup and surfing so easy a 3 year old could do it. Another way to look at it is, If I have a car with every option that can be put on a car, but I don't know how to use 80% of it, what good are all those options to me.

I think MP is on the right track with letting us configure every aspect of the system, but as the HTPC community grows we will need to help along the new members that don't know what a codex is and just wants it to work.

Something else to consider is a distro that has all the other supporting files like winamp and FF and such, again helping out the thenicalogicaly challenged.

 

[Anonymous]

I built an MCE 2005 box with dual tuners. The OEM copy I got was $150 CAD.

I have serveral Xboxes in my house and already have solution for playing back Music, video and pictures using XBMC. The only thing missing is that I wanted to be able to have a network PVR. MCE2005 seemed to be the best solution for me because of the Xbox extenders. It works very slick... I have two Xbox Extenders and a Linksys WMCE54AG.

Now I hope that one day I will be able to replace MCE2005 and Xbox extenders with MediaPortals all linked together. For those who think MediaPortal is not very good, just look back several months to the first versions and see how far it has come. Next, go look at some other solutions and actually try them and then compare to MediaPortal. An example is the Music playback. I am used to XBMC and MediaPortal is very similar (I still prefer XBMC right now though). For fun, I copied about 50 albums to my MCE2005 box and tried using it to play Music. Sure it worked, but not even remotely close to being as good as MP or XBMC. I have disabled all menu options on MCE2005 except My TV and My Pictures (cannot figure out how to remove latter).

 

[jon230873]

Sometimes giving all the options can be too much. I am a programmer and MP puts me off when I go to install it because I know it will be an hour thing of trail and error to get me TV card working. Take showshifter, install configure and run, no playing around with codec etc.

Hats of to the guys that are creating MP it is a great piece of software and everyone appreciates it but would it be possible to have a default setup and package.

Say MP for beginner which is MP and say the FFdraw codec, install the package and a wizard runs up to up you set your card up and it sets all the advance options. Then if you want latter you can go in and change the settings

Just a thought, what do others thinks :?: