I've been using it every day for probably a decade as well and it's still my favourite media centre application and I will probably continue to use it for the foreseeable future. I've tried Kodi and others things such as TV Headend but still prefer Mediaportal's way of handling media and TV. The only downside I find is that I don't like MP2 from having tried it several times and MP1 TV server has a few hardware limitations that have limited my choices when it comes to choosing tuners.
Is Mediaportal dying out? (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter eetaylog
- Start date
United Kingdom
Sadly I am passing on MP more and more recently. I feel its not keeping up with the times. Even MP2 is much of the same old I find, for me it offers nothing new at all. These days you can pick up a Fire Stick for next to nothing, get access to all the major streaming services and what has been the bullet for MP for me personally - Plex. Especially now it’s doing LiveTV DVR. Also not having multi-platform support is a big deal. With Plex I can watch my TV Shows, Movies on practically anything with a screen or can plug into a TV, the convenience is unrivaled. I know there are options for MP but the apps are amateur at best and I feel always in real danger of not being supported longer term (and many aren’t). I see same as guy on previous page, a decent skin comes out once in a while.. supported a couple of months, then dies.
For me the lure of one device, is too great. I’ll keep MP around, it served me well for many many a year. Time will tell I guess. 10+ years ago what was relevant isn’t so much now. No one really had tablets, smart phones, consoles and streaming devices.. but they do now and they are only going from strength to strength.
For me the lure of one device, is too great. I’ll keep MP around, it served me well for many many a year. Time will tell I guess. 10+ years ago what was relevant isn’t so much now. No one really had tablets, smart phones, consoles and streaming devices.. but they do now and they are only going from strength to strength.
These "major streaming services" of which you speak -- do they provide video free of charge, over a broadband connection that is also free of charge? Just curious!
-- from CyberSimian in the UK
Sorry I think you missed my point, maybe I was not very clear, but that is a straw man. Of course they are not free and I do have active subscriptions to them (have since I finally cut the cord and my dependence on the corporate money grabbers that are bskyb ha). I am talking about having one device, one GUI that enables ‘access’ to all this. Not oh I just watched MePo TVSeries now I have to close MePo and open Netflix, then close that and back to MePo reaching for keyboards all the time.
I guess if you have yet to start using premium apps then it won’t apply.
It is of course only my personal opinion. Good chance I am wrong. But when your client can be a £30/40 amazon fire stick you can carry in your pocket, have access to all your local media (as MePo does), netflix, amazon and other premium services, Live TV with DVR, apps which are fully supported an evolving, all with about 5 minutes configuration.. I just think MePo either isn’t moving with the times (or my interpretation of them) / is trying to be different (which I think long term will be a mistake) or simply the open source model can’t support anything else.
Let me be clear, I am not bashing MP. I have donated a couple of times, I donated to plugins I used. I know this would be painful for a dev to read, I understand the time people sunk into MP and it is appreciated, they achieved something quite incredible considering and so much to be proud of.. Maybe I’ll miss MP and come back - but I owned an Amazon Fire TV for 1 week and there is nothing I want personally it can not do, easier and just as visually pleasing as MP (if not better). **PLEX** it all works on every single device I own with no configuration at all.. Literally I installed on a Fire TV, Android tablet, iPad and an iPhone with just a username and password and it immediately works with all my thousands of media files I previously used MP to manage. Transcoding on the fly with no config at all for mobile signal.. No config what so ever! Worst still MP2 is essentially just doing what MP1 does all over again. Like I say it depends alot on circumstance obviously, but some years ago I was excited for MP updates. What cool new stuff are those devs adding this time!? But now its ‘we fixed some random obscure error that single figure users had’ as its highlight.
I mean, more to your point, take Youtube. One of the biggest sources of freely streamed content in the world available on everything with a screen.. MP can not even play it over 720p for as long as I can remember. It’s 4k 60hz now? Oh but we added the possibility to bulk delete recordings in the latest quarterly major update..
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I wish I could win the lottery and give you a million to invest in licenses or more man power or something. I think even getting it onto other platforms would keep it relevant. All the kids I know, my nephews, co-workers, many of them don’t even buy desktop PCs anymore. Its not going to change. If they own a ’computer’ its a laptop. More often its a tablet. If they want something similar to what MP offers every single last one of them buy an android box and put Kodi on. Every single person I know. No exceptions. They’ve never even heard of MP.
Lets face it Kodi is only the household name it is for its ease of piracy (not to have the kettle call the teapot black and it all came from the same place), testament to MP for trying to keep it clean and achieving it. But even that can run on a raspberry pi (and well too).
MP got here in what, 15 years? What is the MP Team vision for the next 15 years? Do you really think it will be going from strength to strength then? I’ll challenge it will even exist then if nothing changes. I think that is sad
The guys who made Titan put out that iOS app.. great thing, again platform specific so doesn’t reach many folks. Now an iOS update comes along and bam, its dead. No one is buying into that kind of frankly pathetic support (they even have end users testing the backend loads on iOS for them?).. but thats what Team MP should have done, better and monitised some of the work. Look at Plex now in even less time. Thats what MP2 should have been not a refactor of MP1. I know that doesn’t do it justice but to an end user thats all the see.
I read a quote the other day, they were referencing it to Steve Jobs vision being 10 year iPhone anniversary etc. Henry Ford saying if he’d of asked people what they wanted, they would of told him ‘faster horses’. Need to think bigger and show people what they don’t know they want yet.
Lets face it Kodi is only the household name it is for its ease of piracy (not to have the kettle call the teapot black and it all came from the same place), testament to MP for trying to keep it clean and achieving it. But even that can run on a raspberry pi (and well too).
MP got here in what, 15 years? What is the MP Team vision for the next 15 years? Do you really think it will be going from strength to strength then? I’ll challenge it will even exist then if nothing changes. I think that is sad
The guys who made Titan put out that iOS app.. great thing, again platform specific so doesn’t reach many folks. Now an iOS update comes along and bam, its dead. No one is buying into that kind of frankly pathetic support (they even have end users testing the backend loads on iOS for them?).. but thats what Team MP should have done, better and monitised some of the work. Look at Plex now in even less time. Thats what MP2 should have been not a refactor of MP1. I know that doesn’t do it justice but to an end user thats all the see.
I read a quote the other day, they were referencing it to Steve Jobs vision being 10 year iPhone anniversary etc. Henry Ford saying if he’d of asked people what they wanted, they would of told him ‘faster horses’. Need to think bigger and show people what they don’t know they want yet.
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- Admin
- #106
MP2 is based on a fully rewritten code and the concept is different in most areas. Of course there are some parallels (not avoidable because many devs used MP1 before, but I never did for example), but the differences are rather dominating. I'm not saying that everything is better in MP2, so please don't think that I want to start the standard bashing
MP2 is mainly deveoping new features, they just take longer as planned. Partly waiting is painful, I know
But I can say, that the next main version of MP2 (Version 2.2) will bring a lot of new features:- User Management. You can activate it and switch between users during login or operation.
- Configure which shares and settings can be accessed by whom
- Age control. Almost all international age certificates are considered during import and they are translated into ages. Means even you have media items with US certificates and German certificates, you can just set a limit of 6 years and all other media items are filtered away. Files with PG (Parental guide) etc. can be also set. This is already working in current WiP branch.
- New Home Contents (oriented mainly on Plex and Kodi - not MP1) for all MI (Even TV channels, TV-programs) allowing to handle frequent actions directly from home screen without navigating into MI screens and clicking around a lot.
- Last Added
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Here a preview picture from WMC skin. The content dynamically slides in, when the focused SubMenuItem is changing:
- Plugin/Package Manager (Ok, that is long time available for MP1 )
- ...
I fully agree with @TheBatfink. I guess all of us became mp users and fans because we wanted an all in one solution which was
nowhere to be found as perfect as in mp. But everytime something new comes onto the market mp needs much more time to
adapt because of the lack of devs and money and due to some limits like from being bound to Windows.
Nowadays there are real good alternatives and most of them (if not all) don't need Windows.
That's making even me thinking of something different. I am building a house and have planned all the time with a
mp network for every "media" room. But then I see how anoying some problems with Windows are (which belongs to mp usage anyway)
and how long things take and I start thinking whether I can't get things much easier!?
I think mp has always been a solution for enthusiasts and it will always be. But, in respect to the growing market of alternative solutions,
the number of enthusiasts willing to accept all of the downsides of mp will decline.
nowhere to be found as perfect as in mp. But everytime something new comes onto the market mp needs much more time to
adapt because of the lack of devs and money and due to some limits like from being bound to Windows.
Nowadays there are real good alternatives and most of them (if not all) don't need Windows.
That's making even me thinking of something different. I am building a house and have planned all the time with a
mp network for every "media" room. But then I see how anoying some problems with Windows are (which belongs to mp usage anyway)
and how long things take and I start thinking whether I can't get things much easier!?
I think mp has always been a solution for enthusiasts and it will always be. But, in respect to the growing market of alternative solutions,
the number of enthusiasts willing to accept all of the downsides of mp will decline.
- Moderator
- #108
As long as the needed online resources are alive, like Trakt or The TV Database, and the scripts for scraping info is being updated, MediaPortal will stay installed on my small HTPC client. This is still one of the biggest draws of an HTPC for me, that you can get meta-data so easy. Even subtitles with your remote.
Emph
Emph
Hi all.
Everyone writing her has good point for what they say and it is very much related of their current needs. For me Mp1 still provides everything I need and it is still main Tv app I use. local subscription for pay tv: Works, major online services I need works with OnlineVideos(Netflix,Yle areena,Ruutu,Katsomo):Works, though after Ministerix is out of manpower I dunno how long that will last. Foreign iptv streams work as dvpip tv channels(very nice). So it's all I need for now, but Im worried about OnlineVideo sites. They might stop working it there is no one to fix them every now and then. I've tried few times, but it takes me for ages, when team can fix it in minutes Respect !!
Peace fellows and Br,
Everyone writing her has good point for what they say and it is very much related of their current needs. For me Mp1 still provides everything I need and it is still main Tv app I use. local subscription for pay tv: Works, major online services I need works with OnlineVideos(Netflix,Yle areena,Ruutu,Katsomo):Works, though after Ministerix is out of manpower I dunno how long that will last. Foreign iptv streams work as dvpip tv channels(very nice). So it's all I need for now, but Im worried about OnlineVideo sites. They might stop working it there is no one to fix them every now and then. I've tried few times, but it takes me for ages, when team can fix it in minutes
Respect !!Peace fellows and Br,
Good example: they do work, but you have to accept compromises like a very limited operability of my remote with Netflix or (even worse) Amazon.
And as you just said it's mainly one man behind this (thx @Ministerk) with all the risks a single staffed position means.