Is mediaportal going to survive the new xbmc (1 Viewer)

[Shangostar]

My MCE remote gives me everything I can think of in MePo, in XBMC I can't remap buttons and only basic navigation and playback works. No context menu support, no zoom button support etc. MePo really shines here IMHO. With every new XBMC release I cross my fingers and hope that my remote has more functions than UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, OK, BACK, PLAY, STOP, PAUSE, SKIP, VOLUME, but I'm always disappointed. Fully functioning remote (like a consumer DVD/BluRay player) is a dealbreaker for me.

I will keep trying it out though as it's really great otherwise.
Emph

That was a deal breaker for me when i recently tried the new XBMC too, I was determined to get it working but after 2 days of faffing about with eventghost mapping and trying to eliminate double taps I folded and had to give up. Shouldn't have to fart about like that for simple MCE remote functionality.

 

[Vimes]

I must be lucky then as I continue to have no issues at all with my MCE remote and XBMC, it just works with the level of functionality I need.

 

[1stdead]

My MCE remote gives me everything I can think of in MePo, in XBMC I can't remap buttons and only basic navigation and playback works. No context menu support, no zoom button support etc. MePo really shines here IMHO. With every new XBMC release I cross my fingers and hope that my remote has more functions than UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, OK, BACK, PLAY, STOP, PAUSE, SKIP, VOLUME, but I'm always disappointed. Fully functioning remote (like a consumer DVD/BluRay player) is a dealbreaker for me.

I will keep trying it out though as it's really great otherwise.
Emph

That was a deal breaker for me when i recently tried the new XBMC too, I was determined to get it working but after 2 days of faffing about with eventghost mapping and trying to eliminate double taps I folded and had to give up. Shouldn't have to fart about like that for simple MCE remote functionality.

Well i was afraid of that as well. But I accidently forgot to uninstall irss and to my supprise my remote was working 95% perfectly in XBMC. I did some reconfiguration of how the buttoms acted, but you're right it is a mess. But figuring out the system and now the remote works even better than it did with mediaportal I think. I think all remotes that works in IRSS should work 90% out of the box with XBMC. I have MCE remote with IMON IR receiver case btw.

Although this wasn't the reason for I left MP. I had huge problems with half-screen(despite a possible fix by Gibman). MP also crashed multiple times for me and i grew tired of bughunting and I lost the time for playing around with HTPC so just needed something that worked out-of-box.

PROS:
- Simple and just works!
- More stable than MP
- GUI way more responsive(On SSD, tried MP as well)
- Possible to add sources as ftps, sftp - endless.
- Android remote working out of the box
- Message system - i can send messages from CMD(use it for seeing how the state is for incoming tvshows) and message that my external HDD har started.
- Plugin system



CONS:
- Design are somewhat not professional compared to Avalon/maya which i contributed to.
- Poor videofilter configuration. I miss Sebastii and (sorry forgot his name) work on BDplayer, lavfilters, 2 edition mkv. Better external subtitle support(shows language for show.DANISH.srt, xbmc does not)
- Movingpictures and MPTVSeries just handle info better than XBMC no doubt. XBMC stores info and cannot be altered without update. Manual changes should happen in NFO(ok if you don't have to). No danish scraper at all.
- TRAKT integration seems poor compared to damienhs trakt here.
- Advanced settings are in xml...
- Subtitle integration works, but search engine seemed better in subcentral.
- Bughunting is worse than MP
- No respond on my possible bug reports in forum

 

[Shangostar]

Although this wasn't the reason for I left MP. I had huge problems with half-screen(despite a possible fix by Gibman). MP also crashed multiple times for me and i grew tired of bughunting and I lost the time for playing around with HTPC so just needed something that worked out-of-box.

I had that a lot too on win 7, tried all the fixes presented in the thread but none worked for me, in the end I just went back to Vista.
Really hope the team have dealt with it adequately in MP2.

 

[Holzi]

What do you mean with "more stable than MP"?

MP really never crashes to Desktop in my setup(s). Maybe I have just installed the right plugins.

 

[Vimes]

I doubt very much if I ever had MP actually crashing for me when I used it over the years. The built in refresh rate changing aspect was great when that appeared as was the MCE remote control feature.

One of my biggest issues with MP was the codec use and stuttering issues. Both of those problems were never completely resolved regardless of many permutations of codecs and posts, with pictures, of the issues I was having. Using codec packs (SAF) or individually configured codecs did not completely resolve the issue.

Going to XBMC and, for me, it was a more complete out of box working experience with absolutely no issues at all in relation to codecs or any stuttering. The TV series and Movie functionality is not quite on par with either the TV series plugin or Moving Pictures of MP but it is simply good enough to provide a fully working media centre with minimal intervention.
To work all the above within the one window of the settings function of XBMC was both intuitive and easy to manage.

The Android remote functionality is nice to have for my tablet and it works very very well with XBMC.

 

[Holzi]

One of my biggest issues with MP was the codec use and stuttering issues. Both of those problems were never completely resolved regardless of many permutations of codecs and posts, with pictures, of the issues I was having. Using codec packs (SAF) or individually configured codecs did not completely resolve the issue.

Going to XBMC and, for me, it was a more complete out of box working experience with absolutely no issues at all in relation to codecs or any stuttering. The TV series and Movie functionality is not quite on par with either the TV series plugin or Moving Pictures of MP but it is simply good enough to provide a fully working media centre with minimal intervention.

I agree that codecs could be a pain in MP. (thats why we included LAVF in MP 1.3.0. + you can configure them directly in the MP Config)
But you could achieve a better picture quality compared to XBMC.

 

[Vimes]

I found the picture quality (50" Samsung Plasma) to not be really affected by the codecs in too much of a detrimental way.
Codec have been for me one of the very very biggest issues that I have ever had with MP and it was those eventually which made me go over to XBMC and now I can simply forget all about them, it really does make that much of a difference.
Both my Son and brother have found a more complete and hassle free experience by using XBMC without the need to configure anything at all as it simply works for them. If they did they would simply need to use the same interface within XBMC as they do when watching it. With MP you have the separate configuration panel to need to use from the Windows desktop, something I have hidden for both of those people as XBMC simply boots right away with Windows.

 

[Holzi]

I like the seperate configuration panel. Maybe I also like to configure a lot...
Of course there are people who like the concept of XBMC where you don't have to configure anything, but maybe also some people like it the way MediaPortal handles this.
There is also option for MP to start right away if windows has booted but XBMC starts much faster than MP I heard.

 

[Vimes]

I personally did not have an issue at all with the separate panel but for people like my Son and brother they can change skins etc without ever having to leave the one single window, changing skins and it also does not need the XBMC to restart. They no longer need to do anything other than use their remote controls. No mouse or keyboard is required. My Son uses his iPhone to control XBMC.

For me it was spending much more time within the config of MP and the codec pain that was very very frustrating and totally negated with XBMC.

As I just place XBMC on suspend it simply sleeps until activated and thus the start up thing is not really important to me. The only slight issue I have had with XBMC is the need to use the advance and retard feature for the subtitles, if needed. That is simple enough and can be done live whilst watching the film etc.