Is Media Portal right for me? (1 Viewer)

[Tau]

Alright so im tired with MCE as it does not do nearly everything that i would like, i have been doing some research and sofar Media Portal claims to do the things that i want!

So basically i am looking for something that will do the following;

allow me to play tv (duh) record, timeslip, all that jazz
watch movies i have on my computer (from across my network as well)
play music
play internet radio
play games through without having to close out of the front end (such as wow, CSS, NFS, etc, etc.)
play Emulators with xbox360 controllers

must support the MCE remote, the wireless keyboard/mouse/remote thing, and support for the Soundgraph VFD in my case would be nice as well.

But i want to be able to run any external application through the front end so that i do not need to use a mouse i can just go down to it on the remote and bam i can be playing a emulator with a controller, instead of having to go across the room use the mouse to launch the application close out of media center then reload it, etc.

From what i have been reading Media Portal will do all this. though i have also read it has issues playing tv? also there are talks of it running as a server, and a client? I plan on just installing it as a front end on XP Pro and then streaming all the files across my network from my file server, is this possiable?

 

[NickName]

I too have a Soundgraph VFD, MCE Remote, wireless keyboard, etc. I have tried MCE but prefer Mediaportal.

I do most of what you talk about though there is a learning curve with Mediaportal (aka. MP) to get it to work the way you want. The more you play with it, the easier it gets.
The TV functionality is great, though do yourself a favour and get a 'supported' TV card as it will make your experience better (and easier). Preferably get a dual tuner or two tuners as it is fairly pointless recording what you are watching (usually).
Networking will require either 100meg ethernet or a "better then 54 meg 802.11 WiFi". Note: Some people do use 54 meg Wifi happily but sadly I am not one of them :-(

Good luck,

Nick Name.

 

[Tau]

I too have a Soundgraph VFD, MCE Remote, wireless keyboard, etc. I have tried MCE but prefer Mediaportal.

I do most of what you talk about though there is a learning curve with Mediaportal (aka. MP) to get it to work the way you want. The more you play with it, the easier it gets.
The TV functionality is great, though do yourself a favour and get a 'supported' TV card as it will make your experience better (and easier). Preferably get a dual tuner or two tuners as it is fairly pointless recording what you are watching (usually).
Networking will require either 100meg ethernet or a "better then 54 meg 802.11 WiFi". Note: Some people do use 54 meg Wifi happily but sadly I am not one of them :-(

Good luck,

Nick Name.

i am currently using a P4 3.0Ghz, 512 Ram, 9600AIW, Haupauge 150MCE and will be upgrading this to, Intel E6600, 2Gb Ram, 7600GT/GS, and keeping the Haupauge 150MCE, my entire network is on a gigabit backbone so that will not be an issue

So it looks like MP is exaclty what the doctor ordered i will be formating my current media PC and installing XP Pro and giving MP a shot then, can you reccomend anything special i will need to do, or any special tips?

also will i be able to launch external applications from within MP, then on their close it just goes back to MP and not to the desktop?

Also would i have any issues using wired, as well as wireless xbox 360 controllers?

Also when recording tv does it encore any form of DRM? and am i able to set it to encode to Divx? Also is there any playback restrictions? How is the media organisation on it?

 

[NickName]

Special tips?
I use a freeware tool to automatically create a Restore Point everyday so if something goes wrong, I can roll it back to the day before. This makes downtime about 15 minutes
I dual boot two different but identical XPs on different partitions, so again, if something goes wrong with one XP, we just boot the other XP. Downtime = 3-5 minutes.
I have a critical wife and 4 little kids so downtime is a very BAD thing :-(
I also keep all critical data (Photos, Music, Recordings, DVDs on a separate HD drivec as I had XP corrupt a partition for no real reason and I don't want to risk everything else again...
You could use an application like Norton Ghost to image an install you are happy with so if XP stuffs things, you can just dump the image over the top. It's worth mentioning that I use Linux to manage a boot partition so XP will have a harder time screwing that as well.

Wired and unwired controllers? I use my MCE remote which I love (price, functionality & robustness) and when the kids have misplaced that, I use "Bluetooth Remote control" software and control MP with my mobile phone
I can't comment on your exact hardware, but if they work with XP, they pretty much will work with MP.

External Applications: MP uses DirectX for it's prettiness. This can make external app a little trickier to run. There is an MP setup option to "minimise MP on exit". This can be handy if the external application is clashing with MP. You'll use MP's built in "My Programs" plugin for external applications...

There is a much better driver for your remote called MCE Replacement which I highly recommend as you can run macros, assign keystrokes, etc. etc. and will make MP much more customisable for you.
Get it here: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...t15793.html?t=15793&highlight=MCE+Replacement

There is no DRM in recordings. There is a plugin (somewhere...search these forums) to encode to DixX in the background.
There are two versions of MP. A standalone version (TV2) and a client/server beta version (TV3).
TV2 records in DVR-MS and TV3 records in MPEG2.
Try TV3 first, if if works well enough for you, use that. I use TV2 but that is because my TV tuner cards don't play well with TV3 (yet). TV3 is newer, hence the Beta...

Media organisation is pretty good. I recently started using the SpinSafe Revolver skin as it uses more screenspace to display different things, like EPG, DVDs, MP3s. This is handy when you use widescreen. Why waste screenspace when you have many items to see?

good luck,

 

[Tau]

Thanks for the great reply very insightful

i usually dont have issues with windows ever getting corrupted unless im overclocking, in which case nothing important is installed anyways I will most likly make a ghost with Acronis Tru Image (Much better then Norton Ghost) and use that, or create a network ghost on the server... something along those lines.

Sounds like it does everything i just need to spend the time and play with it to get it configured correctly for my application.

I have been playing with it on a diffrent computer (no tuner) and when i launch an external program through it and then close that program it misdraws MP as in it still has w/e the launched application was overlayed but i can hear the menu changing commands, is there a way to refresh it? or is this that minimise MP option that you talked about?

Again thanks for the help.


***EDIT***

I have been fiddling with it and i cannot get it to properly exit out of a program that i launched through it, it is always left with a still image of the software overtop of MP that i cannot get rid of without a reload of it.

 

[ReBui|der]

Try this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/cant_exit_mame_myprograms-t20343.html?p=133255#post133255

/Lars

 

[Tau]

Try this:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/cant_exit_mame_myprograms-t20343.html?p=133255#post133255

/Lars

Well this has worked on my SNES emulator now to test on the other ones as well as full screen games, thanks alot!