Leaving my trusty MediaPortal (1 Viewer)

[joz]

Hey all,

MediaPortal has served me very well over the last years but I'm leaving my trusty MP behind for daily usage and I am switching to XBMC.
The main reason behind this is stability and speed, XBMC wins big on that imo.

It's been a lot of fun tweaking and hanging around on these forums, want to say to all the great developers out there which make MP the tech savy product it is now!

I'll be keeping an eye out on development around here, so who knows what the feature brings...

and goodbye!

 

[DieBagger]

Very sorry to hear that and thx for all your contributions to mediaportal!

Bye and cu...

 

[chemelli]

Hi and sorry you leave.

If you have time to answer, I would like to know which is the most affected area for your daily usage and if MP usualy crash to desktop or has other stability issues.



Simone

 

[joz]

Hi Simone,

First off it's not really fair to compair the two I think for the reason that I have tons of plugins installed on MP and only a couple on XBMC.
This was the hardest to leave behind, all this great functionality and tweakability MediaPortal offers but also brings a lot of let's say "third party" code into the whole thing. Plugin's crash and take everything with it. I know if I just strip it down a little I can have MP stable as well.

XBMC for me offers almost everything I needed out of the box. The skin looks really nice and works smooth.
I used StreamedMP as my default on MediaPortal and these guys are pushing it a little on the MP skin engine part resulting in heavy load. Now I know your saying pick a different skin, I know, that's not the point though. I like this skin, xbmc brings the same and even more awesome skins in a workable fashion.

Now my personal believe is that the XBMC team has been more focused on one certain aspect of being a piece of mediacenter software. MediaPortal is a bit different, having put much effort in the whole TV engine setup.
I have used the tv server in the past but not using it anymore and do not really have the need for it so that's no argument either for me.

What's also important for me is that I often leave my mediacenter software to for example start a browser or a game. XBMC is lightning fast when it comes to reopening when closed down in this fashion, MP takes a bit of time (around the 5 - 10 seconds, and that on a system running with an SSD). I have also experienced crashes or longer lagtimes in these situations or when returning from standby for example.

I had been wiating for the dharma release of xbmc to try it out again and see how it works out, so I did. Now I think I have all functionality I really need (which is not much when you break it down) which works smoothly, stable and also looks nice. So all that finally convinced me.

 

[Spragleknas]

Hi joz
Sad to hear you're leaving, but if XBMC serves you better, then the choice should be obvious. (You'll never know... you might return one day )

Good luck with XBMC .

 

[WileECoyote]

Hey Joz,
I too am sorry your going. I tried XBMC a while back and was convinced it was superior to MP. It was quicker & smoother (as you mentioned), and I was very happy with the progress they were making with the PVR plugin(s). BUT, I was missing some important parts of my HTPC, bitstreaming and my NetFlix. Although XBMC has a version that you can pick/swap codecs for bitstreaming, it didnt support the PVR plugins thus no PVR functionality (and it looks like it will be months before there will be a version that supports both.) As far as NetFlix is concerned, I was using PlayOn with uPnP and that was on/off success. It started off working well, but in the end the software is just not 100% ready.

So I started wondering how I could bring the smoothness/quickness of XBMC to MP? I ended up dumping XBMC and started developing a skin (Confluence) that will hopefully bring it all together. I am trying to make the skin as light as possible to make it smooth and quick, but also have the same or similar look and feel as the XBMC Confluence skin. Its only in the early stages, but if you someday want to try MP again the skin might be an alternative.

Take care!
Wile E.