Is Media Portal for me? (Beyond TV User) (1 Viewer)

[enigma9o7]

I currently use a combination of BeyondTV for Recording/Watching TV (from two ATSC tuners, using an antenna, in the US), XBMC for most of my media, and Media Player Classic Home Cinema for watching HD Matroska. My understanding is this software could combine everything into one!

So a few questions.

DVR Related
Will guide info all be automatic when I install, with some type of setup wizard asking me my location and setting up the appropriate guide?
Does it do any commercial/chapter marking so I can easily skip commercials (like beyond tv's smartskip)
I'm assuming it does handle more than one tuner, that I can watch shows that have already started recording, etc, right?
One of my favirote things in BTV is the 10-second skip backward/ 30 second skip forward buttons on my remote, will those work with mediaportal?

Media Playback related:
Does it support video cards with h.264 decoders? My CPU isn't all that new, so when I play a high def mkv with xbmc, VLC or regular mpc, it peggs my cpu at 100% and video often stutters. However if I use mpc-homecinema, which supports the hardware decoding on my video card, my cpu is 25% and plays beautifully.

Other:
Does it work on a secondary display? BTV doesn't work well that way, so I have to clone to my hdtv instead of using my hdtv as a second monitor.
Does it by any chance work as a DLNA server? I have a Samsung BD Player that I currently use with Serviio, it would be cool if I could eliminate that too.

 

[geoffstewart]

Hey enigma,

I've been watching MP for a while and finally made the switch a couple of weeks ago and I love it!

The only reason I switched was to try something new... It was working just fine... but BTV was tired for me.

An overall comment about MP is that it is not nearly as polished in getting things to work as BTV... however, it has a very active community and the fact that it's open-source is golden for me... as a developer, I can simply take a peek at the code to see what it's trying to do to understand some of the quirky nature of it. In the year that I've been following it, it has come a very long way.

So, to answer some of your questions.... here goes nothing:

I get the guide with SchedulesDirect... it's not built in, you need to get a plugin... it works well. I've made some custimizations to this plugin that need polishing, but that I'll share soon.

There is a comskip plugin that can be installed.. again, not built in, but easy to get going.

It does handle more than one tuner... i have three, but I had a heck of a time associating channels with the proper tuner... basically, what I ended up having to do was have distinct channels for each tuner... your case will probably be different than mine... here are my tuners:
hdpvr - component - hd set top box
pvr250 - svideo - sd stb
pvr250 - cable - analog cable

I recommend not combining channels for stb and cable.... doesn't seem to work

Another area that is not built-in is the blaster... there is a hauppauge blaster built in... I couldn't make it work... so I install IRSS that is hugely configurable and use a USB-UIRT to blast to the two stbs... took a while to configure tho.

Playback configuration is way better in MP than in BTV... you have real control over what codecs get used... and if you don't like it, they support using an external player. This is a real plus for me... the H264 looks better somehow with MP than it did in BTV.

I have one under-powered client that uses a nvidia 7700 to playback h264 ... it can do it but only on the primary display... it uses too much juice on the second... I'm not sure hardware accel works on secondary in any app... but you can try.

I don't think there is a plugin for dnla, but open-source communities have a knack for creating stuff that people request

In short, the transition was not flawless, but the end result is rock-solid and I love it... the skins are amazing, the community is very helpful and for me, the ability to see the source is the clincher.

Hope to see you on the forums more !

Cheers.

Geoff

 

[dvbkiwi]

you will find that MP do 99% of what BTV does and then it does about another 80 things that BTV don't do. I have been a BTV user since V3 but moved over to MP about 6 months ago.

The initial MP setup was not nearly as easy as BTV but once I got the hang of it it wasn't so scary. After playing with the setup for a while I discovered loads of useful addons and a nice skin.

Hive it a try and give it some time

 

[SpudR]

Just to add - MP is NOT a 'plug 'n' play solution.
It takes time and effort to get it working perfectly (as noted above), but once you take the time, you'll not only learn lots about the HTPC world, but end up with the best HTPC software going! It's great to see all your friends turning green with envy once you've got it going well

So I guess it depends on what you are looking for - a not quite as good, but easy to setup system; or a fabulous, but takes a little time solution.
If it's the latter then go for MP - you won't regret it (and if you do, there's a great community to help out )

 

[kiwijunglist]

Will guide info all be automatic when I install, with some type of setup wizard asking me my location and setting up the appropriate guide? The setup can tune the channels automatically, but you will have to manually setup the epg data

Does it do any commercial/chapter marking so I can easily skip commercials (like beyond tv's smartskip)? You can use comskip plugin, but i think it requires a small donation

I'm assuming it does handle more than one tuner, that I can watch shows that have already started recording, etc, right? Yes, you can watch and record multiple channels at once, even with a single tuner it can record and watch multiple channels if the channels are on the same transponder!

One of my favirote things in BTV is the 10-second skip backward/ 30 second skip forward buttons on my remote, will those work with mediaportal? Yes it supports skipping by time and you can customise how much time to skip with each press.

Does it support video cards with h.264 decoders? My CPU isn't all that new, so when I play a high def mkv with xbmc, VLC or regular mpc, it peggs my cpu at 100% and video often stutters. However if I use mpc-homecinema, which supports the hardware decoding on my video card, my cpu is 25% and plays beautifully. You can use the MPC-HC codec within mediaportal, so you will have hardware acceleration. After you install mediaportal you should install saf codec pack (specially designed for mediaportal, i recommend installing the "unlocked" version), it will take care of all the codecs you need.