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Is mediaportal going to survive the new xbmc
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<blockquote data-quote="ihaterich" data-source="post: 770650" data-attributes="member: 107768"><p>XBMC is the better media player.</p><p></p><p>I switched to XBMC about 6 months ago and was blown away by how much better it is than MP. My reasons:</p><p></p><p>1. Mediaportal is very slow. Scrolling through shared directories was laggy because MP does not cache folder.jpg files. It has to retrieve them over and over again. Folder pics would also often be displayed upside down. I read countless forum posts about this, but could never fix it. Granted, I was using an older computer as the client, but the same PC has no speed issues running XBMC. XBMC caches all images, so scrolling through files is lightning fast. Getting from A to Z in MP would require slowly (tons of lag) clicking past each item.</p><p></p><p>2. Mediaportal takes forever to open large shared folders. My movies folder is located on my server and has over 800 files in it. Without exaggeration, MP would take 10 to 15 minutes to open this directory. Once opened, MP would then take 2 to 3 minutes to actually start playing a movie. It's hard to watch a movie with friends when you have to wait 20 minutes for it to start. XBMC opens this same directory nearly instantaneously and begins playing a movie in about 5 seconds.</p><p></p><p>3. Thumbnail generation for shared folders would often fail in MP. I'd get stuck with solid grey images, or sometimes nothing at all. MP generates each thumb image on the server then moves it to the client. Alot of times it would fail and leave dozens of corrupt image files on my server. Generating thumbnails from networked shares would also crash the program after extended use. XBMC generates thumbnails quickly and without issue. </p><p></p><p>4. Folder pics and thumbnails are very small in MP. Hard to see from 10 feet away (at least in the default skin which is what I used). Most of the skin was just wasted space. XBMC allows high-res folder pics, and has larger thumbnails.</p><p></p><p>5. I had no luck with MovingPictures/MyTV Series. The scrapers for these plugins are almost completely useless, and only correctly identified about 50% of my movies, and 10% of my TV shows. My media server is very very well organized. Movies are labeled by name and year. Shows are sorted by season with SxxExx episode naming. Renaming 10,000 files to conform to these plugin's standards was not an option. XBMC correctly scraped about 95% of my movies and 90% of my TV shows without any modification. </p><p></p><p>6. XBMC will play anything out of the box. There is no need to setup codecs. MP needs advanced configuration. Some people like this because it allows them to choose their codecs, but most people won't care and just want their stuff to play. My girlfriend knows nothing about computers, and could never correctly configure MP to play a .mkv file. This will be a huge deal breaker for most people.</p><p></p><p>7. XBMC is more stable than Mediaportal. I wouldn't call MP unstable, as I usually had long uptimes, but it did crash or hang fairly regularly (at least a few times a month). XBMC has never crashed or hung.</p><p></p><p>8. MP settings cannot be changed within the program. I always found this annoying.</p><p></p><p>OK that was pretty negative, but here are some things I liked about Mediaportal:</p><p></p><p>1. MP can be accessed remotely using VNC. My media PC is controlled using a gamepad and has no keyboard or mouse. Sometimes I need to login via VNC to do stuff. XBMC uses OpenGL and cannot be displayed over VNC. I had no problem navigating the menus of MP using VNC.</p><p></p><p>2. You can pick your own codecs. Although most people just want their stuff to work, more technically inclined people might want to pick and choose their codecs. Technically you can pick your own codecs in XBMC by using an external player, but that kinda defeats the purpose of using a media center.</p><p></p><p>Sorry if this posts come off overly negative, I don't mean to sound like some fanboy trolling this board, I just wanted to share my experiences to inform others, and offer some constructive criticism.</p><p></p><p>My media PC is rather old, a 2.4 ghz P4 with 1 gig of ram on Windows XP. For the 6 months I ran MP, I mostly attributed its slowness to the age of the PC. However XBMC provides a much faster and more fluid experience on the same machine. </p><p></p><p>Based on my experience, I can't recommend MP to anyone. If you need TV tuner support, I believe there are some experimental XBMC builds that offer this function. If you like to use specific codecs, I would go the external player route in XBMC. The speed and look of XBMC outweigh the drawback of using an external player.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ihaterich, post: 770650, member: 107768"] XBMC is the better media player. I switched to XBMC about 6 months ago and was blown away by how much better it is than MP. My reasons: 1. Mediaportal is very slow. Scrolling through shared directories was laggy because MP does not cache folder.jpg files. It has to retrieve them over and over again. Folder pics would also often be displayed upside down. I read countless forum posts about this, but could never fix it. Granted, I was using an older computer as the client, but the same PC has no speed issues running XBMC. XBMC caches all images, so scrolling through files is lightning fast. Getting from A to Z in MP would require slowly (tons of lag) clicking past each item. 2. Mediaportal takes forever to open large shared folders. My movies folder is located on my server and has over 800 files in it. Without exaggeration, MP would take 10 to 15 minutes to open this directory. Once opened, MP would then take 2 to 3 minutes to actually start playing a movie. It's hard to watch a movie with friends when you have to wait 20 minutes for it to start. XBMC opens this same directory nearly instantaneously and begins playing a movie in about 5 seconds. 3. Thumbnail generation for shared folders would often fail in MP. I'd get stuck with solid grey images, or sometimes nothing at all. MP generates each thumb image on the server then moves it to the client. Alot of times it would fail and leave dozens of corrupt image files on my server. Generating thumbnails from networked shares would also crash the program after extended use. XBMC generates thumbnails quickly and without issue. 4. Folder pics and thumbnails are very small in MP. Hard to see from 10 feet away (at least in the default skin which is what I used). Most of the skin was just wasted space. XBMC allows high-res folder pics, and has larger thumbnails. 5. I had no luck with MovingPictures/MyTV Series. The scrapers for these plugins are almost completely useless, and only correctly identified about 50% of my movies, and 10% of my TV shows. My media server is very very well organized. Movies are labeled by name and year. Shows are sorted by season with SxxExx episode naming. Renaming 10,000 files to conform to these plugin's standards was not an option. XBMC correctly scraped about 95% of my movies and 90% of my TV shows without any modification. 6. XBMC will play anything out of the box. There is no need to setup codecs. MP needs advanced configuration. Some people like this because it allows them to choose their codecs, but most people won't care and just want their stuff to play. My girlfriend knows nothing about computers, and could never correctly configure MP to play a .mkv file. This will be a huge deal breaker for most people. 7. XBMC is more stable than Mediaportal. I wouldn't call MP unstable, as I usually had long uptimes, but it did crash or hang fairly regularly (at least a few times a month). XBMC has never crashed or hung. 8. MP settings cannot be changed within the program. I always found this annoying. OK that was pretty negative, but here are some things I liked about Mediaportal: 1. MP can be accessed remotely using VNC. My media PC is controlled using a gamepad and has no keyboard or mouse. Sometimes I need to login via VNC to do stuff. XBMC uses OpenGL and cannot be displayed over VNC. I had no problem navigating the menus of MP using VNC. 2. You can pick your own codecs. Although most people just want their stuff to work, more technically inclined people might want to pick and choose their codecs. Technically you can pick your own codecs in XBMC by using an external player, but that kinda defeats the purpose of using a media center. Sorry if this posts come off overly negative, I don't mean to sound like some fanboy trolling this board, I just wanted to share my experiences to inform others, and offer some constructive criticism. My media PC is rather old, a 2.4 ghz P4 with 1 gig of ram on Windows XP. For the 6 months I ran MP, I mostly attributed its slowness to the age of the PC. However XBMC provides a much faster and more fluid experience on the same machine. Based on my experience, I can't recommend MP to anyone. If you need TV tuner support, I believe there are some experimental XBMC builds that offer this function. If you like to use specific codecs, I would go the external player route in XBMC. The speed and look of XBMC outweigh the drawback of using an external player. [/QUOTE]
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