In your home, who else knows how to use your HTPC besides U? (1 Viewer)

A

Anonymous

Guest
I was just wondering, does anyone besides the one who built the damn thing knows how to use the HTPC? Can grandma, grand-dad, Wife, kids operate your machine? Or, do you have to spend 2 hours teaching these people how to play one of your Divx files?
 

Callifo

Retired Team Member
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  • December 7, 2004
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    Adelaide, Australia
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    Depends on how comfortable they are with the computer. Sister got used to it in a day but parents took about a week. Now there all fine with it.
     

    lugiber

    Portal Pro
    August 3, 2004
    141
    0
    Sweden
    There is just me and my girlfriend in my home but she doesn't know anything about computers, and by that i mean she really knows nothing. It took her about half an hour to understand how to work with media portal. But i suppose having used a dvd before helped her a lot.

    /Peter
     

    CoolHammer

    Retired Team Member
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  • September 28, 2004
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    Finland
    Hi,

    No problems with it. All our family members are using HTPC fluently.
    - DVD
    - Video
    - MP3
    - Playstation emulator
    - N64 emulator
    - Pictures
    - Weather

    All these functions are in HEAVY use.. Downsize of this is that you need to make sure everything works as used to, after MP uppgrade :)

    Users: Wife, me and 2 girls (10 and 7 years)

    CoolHammer

    PS: Just started to teach how to use remote for our dog :)
     

    Rene.71

    Portal Member
    January 10, 2005
    6
    0
    Vlaardingen
    Well, my wife and my oldest kid can use the system... Media portal itself is quite easy to work with, it's the remote layout which confuses them since it's not a dedicated remote ( sony rm-u304 with girder) which means that the buttons don't always do what the text (on the button) says....:)
     
    A

    Anonymous

    Guest
    All people at my home understand how to use MediaPortal, they can even set it up and build the HTPC it is running on...

    Ohh sh... I'm living alone... *g*

    But I think my father and my sister could handle it quite well, because they use their own pcs for everyday work.

    Now that I got this cool Hauppauge Remote Plugin, I could imagine, that even my mother could handle it very fast.
     

    LastMar

    Portal Pro
    November 17, 2004
    74
    0
    Both of my roommates can use it just fine, I don't live with my folks but mum has MCE, I'm sure she wouldn't have too much trouble changing over....

    Configuration is another issue, especially for remotes and software-encoding TV cards.
     

    mPod

    Portal Pro
    January 26, 2005
    2,084
    3
    Berlin
    Home Country
    Germany Germany
    LastMar said:
    Configuration is another issue, especially for remotes

    The MCE05 remote is supported out of the box, just like in Microsoft's MCE software. Other's are already following, for example the Hauppauge remotes just need a simple DLL to be dropped in the plugins folder, so they also work out of the box. This plugin is in development, but already working almost perfect. So that's no point, where MCE is better than MP. :wink:
     

    mama

    Portal Pro
    May 31, 2004
    334
    0
    Germany
    My wife and her sister are using it daily, even with radio, recording, DVD...

    Even my wife´s 62 years old mother understood within 5 minutes how to switch it on and go to TV with the remote, and she (!)NEVER EVER(!) before used a PC.

    My 11 month old son is already practicing using the remote, but I stole him the batteries... :D
     

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