[Usability] Linux Version Using Mono (1 Viewer)

[pinguy]

Please can this be ported to Ubuntu. None of the HTPC software for Linux are as good as MediaPortal. I loved it when I was using Windows but I just don't use that system anymore. I am actually the developer of Pinguy OS and would love to have MediaPortal installed as the default Media Center.

This should be able to be done using Mono. I have no experience in Mono so can't really help with that. But I do think you should spend some time working on a Linux version. Once you have it working on Linux there's no reason why you couldn't team up with a hardware vendor and start selling systems running MediaPortal. Unlike XBMC or Boxee your software is a DVR so many homes will want this.

I really do think its time to spread your wings. With Windows shipping with a good Media Center you are going to have a hard time trying to convince people to use MediaPortal when Media Center works perfectly well and pre-installed.

Or at the very least make it so it can run under Wine.

 

[gemx]

It's really nice to hear that you like MP

The problem with porting to Linux is not .NET but the C++ side.

The whole GUI and especially the rendering relies heavily on DirectX which is not available on Linux.

There were numerous threads about porting to linux in the past but none idea succeeded - mainly because of the DirectX stuff.

Sorry, porting to linux would mean nearly a complete rewrite.

 

[tourettes]

There has been quite lot of such request in the past - answer will be the same at this time

MediaPortal is highly based on DirectShow and DirectX technologies, using being able to use Mono as .NET framework wont help. Also what comes to running HTPC / video playback application under Wine is just not wise - it is already hard enough to get the video playback quality (timing etc.) for a native applications (be it Windows or Linux), having one extra "emulation" layer in between the HW and application wont help at all. And it would be actually a task for the Wine developers to make their "emulator" (which Wine states it is not) to make sure it would emulate the Windows OS 100% in all aspects. Wine itself is good, I'm not saying that.

I know that this was not the answer that you were looking after, but some OSes are just better for multimedia than others

 

[pinguy]

This is sad to hear. I take it that OpenGL is out of the question then? It has got pretty good in the last couple of years and in some test (I am not saying all) OpenGL has out performed DirectX 9.

It's a real shame that MediaPortal won't be coming to Linux. Since there are a few devices out there now that use Linux, the interest in it has increased, and with Chrome OS coming out a lot of people are starting to look at Linux.

The big thing Linux is missing is a good DVR/HTPC and MediaPortal would fill that gap nicely. Mythtv is no where near as good as MediaPortal and is just not very good. The only reason it's popular is because it has no competition. If you want a DVR/HTPC for Linux MythTV is pretty much it.

I'm really not sure why this can't be done. You could use Mono (.NET framework), GStreamer (DirectShow), OpenGL (DirectX) and V4L (video capture).
Unless I am missing something that would be everything you would need to port it.

 

[tourettes]

I'm really not sure why this can't be done. You could use Mono (.NET framework), GStreamer (DirectShow), OpenGL (DirectX) and V4L (video capture).
Unless I am missing something that would be everything you would need to port it.

Using those would be the same as a complete rewrite of the whole application (some parts could be used directly, but all the most critical parts would require complete rewrite based on the new technology).

 

[pinguy]

But wouldn't it be worth doing? all these technology (Mono, GStreamer, OpenGL) are cross platform. So once it's done MediaPortal will work on all the major OS's (Windows, Mac and Linux).

I understand that it's going to be a lot of work, but wouldn't it be better to get the work done so it works on more then one operating system?

At the end of the day I just work with Linux and would love to have MediaPortal as the default Media Center in Pinguy OS. I am willing to help out as much as I can but it's up to the MediaPortal team if they want to do a cross platform version. I don't know all the workings of MediaPortal yet so will need to look at the source, but there doesn't seem to be anything that would stop this from being ported to Mac and Linux apart from the amount of work that would need to be done. You could take a look at the code for Banshee for the video. It's written in Mono so there could be parts of the code that could be copied to help with video play back in MediaPortal.

Hey, once it done I will be more then happy to build a MediaPortal OS for you lot, a bit like XBMC Live.

 

[miroslav22]

Would be awesome but as said you might as well start from scratch.

It could possibly be considered for MP v3

 

[rogro]

If you really want to keep Linux as your main OS and also want to run MediaPortal you can also consider using a hypervisor like KVM or Xen ( with PCI-passthrough ).

You would still need to run a virtual Windows image and getting it to work highly depends on your hardware and bios being Intel VT-d capable, but its doable.

I currently have a server running Ubuntu 10.10 server with KVM and using my Cine S2 dual DVB-S tuner in an XP image with MediaPortal as TV server. I had to make some modifications to the KVM module source ( to disable MSI/MSIx ), but thats one of the things I love about Linux and open-source...

Its also a very good way to develop or test SVN versions... Simply create a copy of your stable image and you can always switch between versions.

I know its not the same as running it native in Linux, but in some cases I think this can even be a better setup. As soon as the hypervisor/virtualisation technology becomes more stable I think a lot of people will want to create setups like these.

 

[lexi]

rogo, great to hear that I'm not the only one trying to get mediaportal running on a virtualized server.

I've got my DVB-S2 card running inside KVM (using PROXMOX VE), but I habe some latency problems.
I have some shutters every 3-4 seconds. I've already compiled a low latency kvm kernel, but that
didn't help.

Could you please share your changes to KVM? Do have a stable HDTV reception?

 

[Sacamantecas]

Media Portal is the only reason why I'm still using Windows.

Although I understand the difficulty in doing so, I hope someday it can be ported to linux.

Thanks anyway to the developers for this great piece of software which I enjoy very much.