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

[lilrichie]

Hello,

I wanted to chip into this as i see alot of support for XBMC.

I recently got a old computer which i wanted to turn into a MediaCentre XBMC was my first stop as i had used it before on my mac and wanted to see if i could get it working on the old computer.

I setup windows and got a vanilla setup ready to go so i downloaded XBMC and tried to setup a couple of sources which turned out not work work and in hte end i turned in giving up on it as i found the configuration to be very clunky.

This is what bought me to MP i love it you have a separate app for the config and a separate app for the frontend which is great for configuration as i can see all my sources and settings without having to trawl through many different screens to get to what i want.

So essentially what i am saying is that i think MP is superior for first time users and also people who want more control over the way their MP works and behaves, i for one love it and will be sticking with it for some time to come.

Rich

 

[kiwijunglist]

if XBMC had live TV, epg, recorded tv and refresh rate changer i would give it a go.

PS. out of interest, does W7 MCE support dynamic refreshrate changing?

Don't forget MP also has iPIMP which is pretty cool, can't wait to try it with an android phone when i get one later this year.

 

[CrashUK]

xbmc is too simple in many ways, along rhe same lines as MCE, mainly our users want that little bit more, configurable wise, so it suits them, rather than the designers.

Think we both will be around for many years to come, as both aimed at different end users, tweakers will never die out

Your rigth about that. Theys 100s of thing xbmc does not do and for that I need mediaportal. mediaportal has a Refresh Rate Controler this very good for me.. My tv can playback in 24hz which is very cool for all my tv/movie download that are all 24fps.. I never got reclock to work right

if XBMC had live TV, epg, recorded tv and refresh rate changer i would give it a go.

PS. out of interest, does W7 MCE support dynamic refreshrate changing?

Don't forget MP also has iPIMP which is pretty cool, can't wait to try it with an android phone when i get one later this year.

No other program has refreshrate changing.. You have to use reclock which for does not work that well gives lots of skipping.

 

[marv]

btw. xbmc has a "refresh rate changer" in the video settings by default (at least in the nightly builds for months, official release coming soon).

Adjust display refresh rate to match video
Activate to automatically set the refresh rate which is best matched with the video that is playing (default off).
Sync playback to display
This setting enables syncing the video to the refresh rate of the monitor.
A/V sync method [Audio Clock, Video Clock(resample audio) or Video Clock(Drop/Dupe Audio)]
Audio has to stay in sync, this can either be done by resampling, skipping/duplicating packets, or adjusting the clock if it gets out of sync too far. Resampling has the advantage that the speed of the video can be changed considerably, so 24 fps can be sped up to 25 fps to play at PAL speed. The disadvantage of resampling is that it doesn't work with passthrough, and there is a slight loss of audio quality. Skipping/duplicating audiopackets has no loss of audio quality, but the speed of the video can only be changed a little to avoid doing a skip/duplication too often, most of the time it's inaudible, but it can produce a very audible click. Adjusting the clock has the best audioquality, but some extra video jitter can occur, also the speed of the video can't change much, as the audio will sync the clock more often the more the speed of the video is changed.
Allowed error in aspect ratio to minimize black bars(%)
Allow video player to try to fit video to screen by ignoring aspect ratio by a certain amount.
Display 4:3 videos as
Determines the zoom level that 4:3 videos are shown on widescreen displays.

 

[kiwijunglist]

cool, it has everything i need except live tv... i may try it when they get that part going nicely.

 

[the_ult]

------------------------------
the_ult:

XBMC
pros:
- Skins (love the Alaska Skin)
- Almost everything plays out of the box (no codec trouble)
- HT- Experience plugin
- Being able to view the trailer that you downloaded with the movie. (If you're in doubt whether you're gonna like the movie or not)

cons:
- Less updates
- Harder to find Skin updates/changes
- harder to find the correct plugins
- Configuration only inside XBMC
- Not able to change a serie/movie when the wrong one is found
--------------------------------

the_ult, about your cons i have to say, that most of it are not really true.
- for updates u can use the nightly builds, which is highly recommended. the installation with the exe-installer is the simplest. (-> http://sshcs.com/xbmc/ )
- skin updates can be done through a script directy inside xbmc.
- don't know what u mean by "correct" plugins. but in the upcoming release there will be an addon-manager, which makes installing and updating plugins totally easy. it even can handle plugins which are written in any coding language - i am curious about that one.
- configuration inside xbmc is for me an advantage, which means i can do everything in front my tv with the remote.
- you can change wrong scraped movies/series. open the context menu (press "c") and remove the wrong item. then go to file mode and press info - you see all possible results and can choose manually. or you can change the scraper and try again.

next official release should be in few weeks.

just my 2cents.

regards
marv

Just installed the Dharma (nightly build) Install worked pretty cool. With the Alaska skin.
But I'm a bit confused with the new addon manager.. Since I can't find any addons.. (Think they still have to be implemented/commited).
I'm gonna try it.. But I think I will be using both XBMC and Mediaportal..
Neither one fullfills my HTPC needs completely :sorry:

 

[finrudd341]

I continue to be a MP user, and have been for over 4 years now. I have always considered it a superior product, but I also consider it a hobbyists product, as it takes some dedication and love, not unlike an old car, where it has its own quirks to get it to work just right. I am reminded of this when I pass the remote control to someone else, and I find myself saying 'oh, if that happends, go back out and back in again and try it again.' or similar, reminding me that it's not that simple - probably to do with my setup.

I have therefore been thinking more and more about a solution that any of my guests can use - it wont be as nice, but perhaps it will be more stable and perhaps it will be easier to use. XMBC and Windows Media Centre were therefore options I was considering.

Then, this week I finally started using the TV service on a 2-seat installation - ok, I have some work to do still to make it perfect, but last night I recorded the wife's Brazilian soap-opera, in HD so we could go out.

It reminded me why I love MediaPortal, and why MP keeps getting better and better for me. It takes a development team and a community prepared to have faults and problems in their code, fix them, and learn from them, to make a perfect solution - I see that in MP and I don't see it in any other solution.

 

[rkooten]

Same here!

MP is superior thanks to its extensibility and tweakability. That said, as soon as XBMC or similar product would have the same feature-set I would switch immediately. I like MediaPortal but it has issues that would cause me to switch if there was a decent alternative.

I'm back at skinning and that's when you really notice that the code most probably includes many hacks and shortcuts. It's inconsistent at best (sometimes an id/control has a hardcoded action or hyperlink attached to it, sometimes it hasn't, sometimes an id/control is required even if there's no use for its functionality, etc...).

It's not something the developers can do much about. They basically inherited a broken product and it is amazing how much they have been able to fix after they took over... so kudos for that!

To be honest, I hope they drop MP1.x development asap (although some of the features planned for MP1.2 are much appreciated (spin+checkbutton, tableLayout, yes!) and start working on MP2 which seems to have a much better architecture and philosophy. I hope they play around with XBMC and experience its responsiveness before they really get into development mode!

 

[costi]

Tried MP for Windows, and XBMC on Ubuntu (running from a USB stick), both on Acer Aspire Revo 3610 (Atom 330 + ION, 2GB RAM).

XBMC feels much, much faster - it launches immediately, the menus are smooth and responsive, no lags whatsoever. Video playback was perfect out of the box, no need to play around with codecs or filters, just set XBMC to VDPAU (the Linux equivalent of DXVA) and all done.
However, the scraping engine is years behind MP. Ok, it works somehow. But it is very restrictive when it comes to recognising file and folder names, there is no easy way to change a wrongly scraped file, or manually tell it that a not recognized file is this and this movie. Also, there is no included tool to interface with the database outside of XBMC (like the config tools for MP plugins),which makes correcting scraper mistakes even more difficult.

MP, on the other hand, takes ages to load and feels kinda sluggish, there's a bit of delay in reacting to remote commands. Also, I have serious problems with getting the internal player to work properly, 1080p videos are unwatchable no matter what I use (I'll have to try installing 32-bit Windows and see if it helps). However, libabry management is much better - not only there is much less mistakes or "not found" files, but there are easy to use library management tools available. Also, there's a decent anime plugin (while the one for XBMC is still in early development).

To be honest, I don't care much about TV - just watching it is enough for me. If it wasn't for the lousy library managementand poor scraping, I'd jump to XBMC without second thoughts.

 

[marv]

scrapers are little add-ons from different authors. change the scraper and try again, you could have used a bad/broken one.
if you want to change them manually, there are ways inside of xbmc...but you can also try a third party app: Supplemental Tools for XBMC - XBMC Community Forum ("xbmc web media manager" for example is a cross-plattform program).
haven't tried one of these by myself, because scraping works fine for me.

searching the xbmc forums would help a lot...