Is Mediaportal what I'm looking for? (1 Viewer)

adlucas

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August 30, 2007
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Hey all, apologies if this post is in the wrong section/of the wrong topic - but I figured after much unsuccessful googling this would be a sensible place to come.

Heres my situation; I'm a student at a University with a respectable spec laptop (nothing 'super', 1.6Ghz dual core + 1028DDR2 ram etc, XP pro and a fairly nice bose speaker system). Unfortunately with the amount of money I have at the moment I struggle to afford general student life (drink), hence big plasma TVs and mega sound setups are way out of my grasp. I have a fairly large music collection of 8000+ songs, all with correct tags and artwork (although a few are messed up because of Itunes 7+, I can fix these)

My question is; am I looking in the right place? I'm looking for a program similar to Windows Media Center and Apples 'Front row' applications. The type of program which will essentially bring up a nice GUI on my laptop which I can play music with using the remote which came with the laptop (a HP Infra-red thing). DVDs would be a nice bonus, but arn't essential by any means as the laptop has no problem in playing them currently.

I have just installed MediaPortal and found it a fantastic program, although slightly complex for what I am trying to accomplish. I do not need to control any TVs/Xboxs/other devices and only require it essentially to turn my laptop into a large Ipod, controllable from a few metres away (using itunes like this requires eagle eye sight and the patience of a saint to navigate through hundreds of albums/songs and is simply impractical). I consider myself fairly competant with computers, but would dislike to go through hundreds of menus to find out that I was barking up the wrong tree the whole time =/. From what I have seen MediaPortal clogs up the PC alot, is there any way to slim it down if the music component was all I needed? Is there any way to replace the MediaPortal player integrated into the GUI with Itunes (hence all my artwork/tags are shared between the two programs, and Ipod can be updated the same etc).

Hopefully this post explains everything =) thanks in advance for the replies
 

Marcusb

Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • February 16, 2005
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    Melbourne
    hi there and welcome :)

    First off, check out the configuration app in the plugins section. Here you can disable any sections you don't want to use, such as TV, news, etc.
    You can also activate the iTunes plugin and use that although I have never tried it, so cant give any recommendations there.

    For music, I like the built in BASS player with the WinAmp Milkdrop plugin (thanks heaps HWarman -yeah, I know I got your name so wrong).

    Depending on what the remote with the laptop is, it may be easy or hard to set up. Hopefully it's a general HID one and you can just turn on HID suppor in the remote section of config.

    Good luck and hope to see you around :)
     

    onkl

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    February 18, 2005
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    @your hardware: Mediaportal is somewhat resource-intensive, but it shouldn't clog up a system like this in a irritating way. If it does, the weakest link might be your video card. MP is a DirectX 9 program, just like a lot of games. Laptops do -for a lot of valid reasons- in generally not possess a graphic powerhouse which would be preferable then.
    Maybe you can post that part of your specs too?
     

    adlucas

    New Member
    August 30, 2007
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    Thanks for the responses guys, currently in the process of converting all my music into smaller 128kbps .aac files because the laptop is struggling to cope with the higher bitrate files hard-disk wise, it should be all ok now though

    Marcusb Cheers, ill try configuring everything as soon as I finish sorting out this library, going to give Mediamonkey a try (the alpha version >.> since as 2.X doesnt support .m4p files =/)

    onkl My laptop spec is at http://www.ciao.co.uk/HP_Pavilion_Dv2036ea_Entertainment__6525577, unfortunately its shared video memory =/ although ive never had much of a problem before running games etc, if I have to put up with a bit of slowness then its not a big deal for myself anyway

    But, to you guys, it looks like ive hit the right program for the job? As a front-row equivalent for a PC (in a way), Mediaportal is what im looking for you think?
     

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