Is there / should there be a "Getting Started" overview for (new) users (1 Viewer)

JimmyBoy

Portal Pro
April 18, 2008
107
8
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
I have been using MP for 12 - 18 months now, and because I have a life outside of MP it can be difficult to keep on top of what is actually current and what is actually available to me.

Consider yourself being a new user. You like this idea of being able to use MP as your one-stop shop for viewing media etc... so you install it and get it running.

You have it running, and then you start browsing the MP site / forums and realise there are all these additional plugins, acronyms your not familiar with, and generally things that can just confuse you until you have the time & effort to do some research.

Take for example video's, you have

1) MP integrated videos
2) MyFilms
3) Moving Pictures

This can be confusing - which one should I be using, what is the difference between them etc... etc... also to add to the confusion, if I decide I want to use MyFilms I also need to ensure I have a skin which supports MyFilms.

Then you have things like Trakt and follow.it - what are these, how are they relevant and how do I make use of them ?

Then you have the problem of plugins that are no longer supported/developed etc... For example about 6-12 months ago I was looking for a plugin that would allow me to play my games from my HTPC and there was quite a lot of MyEmulators and derivatives of this plugin, some unfinished, some supporting some things but not others etc.... it got very confusing!!

In addition to all this you have to be sure you have all components required to accomplish a paticular task. For example, say I want to be able to view trailers for movies - I have to make sure the following criteria is met.

1) I have OnLineVideos plugin (this does the part of playing the trailer)
2) I have a plugin that allows viewing of trailers (eg Moving Pictures)
3) I need a skin that supports both Moving Pictures & Online Videos
4) I need the skin to provide a button "View Trailer" that views the trailer.

This (especially for new users) can be very confusing, and I think that may be the reason a lot of people go for StreamedMP as it is provided as an all-in-one package so people dont have to concern themselves with all the compatabillity issues.

It would be nice if there was something on the homepage where we could click to take us to a page that would help break things up a little bit and make things more digestable for new (and seasoned) users.

For example the page could be something similar to this :

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIDEOS

Mediaportal provides excellent support for playing back your media (insert extra blurb...)

The following options are available to you for playing back videos when using MediaPortal


MediaPortals internal video player
A description

My Films (link to plugin) (download link)
A description

MovingPictures (link to plugin) (download link)
A description

Video Features
The following is a comparison of the features available in each plugin

Code:
			| MP Video Player	| MyFilms	| Moving Pictures
Parsing of filename	| X			| X		| X
Centralissed Database	|			| X		|
View Trailer Support	|			| 		| X

(It would be nice if the above titles/features where hyperlinks - eg. I could click on "MyFilms" above which would take me to the MyFims page. Also if I clicked on "Centralised Databse" then this would take me to the description of "Centralised Database" in case I wasnt sure of what that meant)

You may also be interested in the following :

Online Videos (link to plugin) (download link)
This will allow (in those video plugins / skins that support it) you to view a trailer for any video you wish to watch.

Trakt (link to plugin) (download link)
This does xyz

follow.it (link to plugin) (download link)
This does xyz

4therecord (link to plugin) (download link)
This does xyz


Video Features provided by a Skin
The following skins provide the following video-features support

Code:
Feature/Skin		| StreamedMP		| Monochrome	| Black Glass
MP Internal Video	| X			| X		| X
My Films		| X			| 		|
Moving Pictures		| X			| X		| X
Online Videos		| X			| X		| X
Viewing Trailer		| X			| X		|


Important Information:
In order to use a paticular feature, you need to ensure that you have a skin that exposes the feature, and the plugin that provides the features functionallity - use the above comparison charts to see what skin / plugin(s) you need to make a feature available to you in MediaPortal.


Current Limitations
(This would be an honest description of what MP can NOT currently do. This I find very useful rather than the "MediaPortal can do EVERYTHING" approach that a lot of products have. Sometimes you are trying to figure out how to do something when in fact it just cant be done as it isnt supported)

Blu-Ray Support - Currently Blu-Ray support is not very well implemented due to restrictions on the codec's used. Some people user PowerDVD to get around this limitation.

ISO files - MediaPortal does not currently support playing media files contained within a .iso archive. Support is intended to be added in version 1.3 (Link to the issue in mantis - to check progress)

(All the above is fictional, just for demonstration purposes of how it MAY be done)


What does it Mean?

Centralised Database - This will allow you to have your movies in a database that is stored on a central server. This is useful if you have a multiseat environment - all MediaPortal clients reference the same database, so each MediaPortal client will be viewing the same films, this can make maintainance easier. Also this means you dont have to use a MediaPortal client to modify the database (if you needed to) as it could be done on a different machine which accesses the database on the server.

View Trailer - This feature will use several online hosts (such as IMDB, iTunes etc...) to find a trailer for the current film that is selected. This is a feature that is provided by the OnlineVideos plugin (download link) and must be installed for this feature to be available
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




In summary:
Hopefully this page would provide an easy overview of what features mediaportal actually provides, AND what I actually need (skins/plugins etc...) to make those features available to me.

There can be quite an overwhelming amount of information to absorb and understand, and it would be nice if there was a page we can go to which is always as up-to-date as possible that shows us what plugins are available for a paticular category, along with feature comparisons of plugins which may seem to be competing with one another.

Also, a way to quickly identify if a skin supports a paticular plugin, and also the reverse of this - if a skin supports something that has an outside dependancy, what is that dependancy and where can I get it.

I have mainly just talked about videos, but of course there are many other categories such as Live TV, TV Series, Radio, Music, Games, Weather etc... that could all be covered.

What do other people think, or is there infact already something like this in the wiki ?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom