MediaPortal awesome...(for single people) (1 Viewer)

[pgitta]

Ah...just finished my third O/S reload in my never-ending quest to achieve HTPC nirvana with MP. First XP, then Windows 7, and finally Vista.

Having long since abandoned any consideration for the WAF since any chance at that has long passed after having nearly attended marriage counceling over my experimentation with SageTV, I have now thrown all caution to the wind and am in full bore with MP.

I know, I may indeed soon find myself back to eating out of cans on a cable spool coffee table...but such is life...

So a word of advice: If you are contemplating marriage, finish your affair with your HTPC first. Tell her "I need more time", and "I'm feeling so confused [at which audio codec is conflicting with...] about it all", or just buy a TiVo...

...and enjoy your lives together.

Until she thinks of something else to torment you about.

 

[gxtracker]

Until she thinks of something else to torment you about.

Thats why i purposely leave my HTPC in an unfinished state: instead of spending her downtime telling me what chores need to be done, or things need to be fixed around the house, she'll just pick on the HTPC which i already know isnt finished.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

2nd thread I have read today that made me smile

Other one here https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/offtopic-57/done-mp-hiring-people-storyboard-66398/

 

[SpudR]

What's wrong with a good old beating eh?
(Preferably giving, but... Whatever floats your boat )
Just utter the fateful phrase:
"Prithee wench, cease your prattle, else I shall beat upon your brow!"

***Health warning***
The preceding advice may cause undue side effects including:
- pain in uncomfortable areas
- profuse bleeding
- an immediate deterioration in sexual encounters

ONLY KIDDING!!

 

[zanlation]

I could imagine the 'discussion' when I say to my wife that I would like to buy a Tivo for AU$700 after spending $1000+ dollars on a HTPC

 

[infinite.loop]

I think that getting MP up and running is a lot more problematic if you life outside europe.
Especially if you are located in the US.

Not much we can do about that since our Team is mainly from europe and ppl from US seem not interested at all to activelky contribute (develop) for MediaPortal.
At least all the past team members (developers) from the US dissapeared rather quickly without having done much.
So we keep on developing "in the dark" when it comes to NA/SA specific issues.

Everyone who considers to use a HTPC should first test MP on a ordinary PC and get familiar with it.

• Then buy the hardware and dont go for the cheap crap. Forums will help you.
• After that build the HTPC, install everything and test it.
• just install and configure MP without any additional skins and plugins to get things working, then backup and try plugins/skins
• DO NOT INSTALL A ZILLON OTHER THINGS!
• Once all is working put it in production and DO NOT CHANGE IT!
• And always remember Acronis TrueImage is your friend

btw. Even though my HTPC's are working flawlessly at home, i still have a ordinary dvb-s sat receiver in the livingroom as backup, just in case.

 

[pgitta]

[QUOTEI think that getting MP up and running is a lot more problematic if you life outside europe.
Especially if you are located in the US.][/QUOTE]

Not much we can do about that since our Team is mainly from europe and ppl from US seem not interested at all to activelky contribute (develop) for MediaPortal.
At least all the past team members (developers) from the US dissapeared rather quickly without having done much.
So we keep on developing "in the dark" when it comes to NA/SA specific issues.]

I think there is much truth to this. I did finally get a working setup going, but sadly, I am forced to revert to my old SageTV setup due to technical problems and some lost features I became very accustomed to.

Please do not in any way take this as a slam on MP. Man, it has so many things I love about it more than the other packages out there. Nothing would make me happier than to stick with it, and perhaps the new Infinity project will be different, but for now, even though I plan to leave it installed, it won't be the primary DVR in use.

I will outline a few points in the hope that they may be useful in future releases. (As I have primarily used sageTV and Media Portal, many comparisons will be between those two.)

Things I liked:

• Price
  
• Smooth FF/RW. SageTV and their users insisted it couldn't be done like TiVo because of encoder issues, etc. "Crapola". your application, other than HD files, did it just fine and I loved it.
  
• MP had a CD player. Duh. SageTV "Media Center" has no way to play a CD. I suppose they don't consider it media.
  
• GUI. Absolutely gorgeous compared to SageTV. I will miss it very much.
  
• Much better results with displaying video with included encoders. Sage's shipped codecs stink. Neccesitate the purchase of NVidia PureVideo decoders at added expense. (note: Curiously, NVidia decoders don't work well with MP at all!) Doesn't matter though, because you don't need them.
  
• All the cool plugins. Especially used last.fm plugin a lot.
  
• Music jukebox destroys Sage's clunky, almost unuseable interface. And it scanned my library in seconds unlike whatever Sage was doing for 20 minutes. I was able to listen right away.
  
• Fewer "hangs" in the user interface. Very quick response between menu changes.
  
• SQL database I can access and manipulate compared to SageTV proprietary "wiz.bin" file. That thing is annoying.
  
• A support community that helps, rather than attacks. SageTV forum full of Sage "groupies" who cannot tolerate this sort of honest criticism. Do not attempt to point out flaws at that site. You will regret it.
  
• Third party plugins generally work much better than SageTV "STV" imports, many of which are prematurely posted and in defective or unfinished states.

Now, in fairness, as they say, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day". And actually, SageTV is right much more than twice a day, and even an great app like MP could stand to learn a few tricks from them:

• Major setup components (guide, settop box support, remote, etc) are included in the package. I think it is a big mistake to tell users to find a third party application and install it if they want to control their DVR with a remote.
  
• Settings changes require leaving the program in MP. Very inconvienient.
  
• MP Client is simply unreliable, at least for me anyway, and very slow to browse files or start playing. Some high definition content "black screens" and locks up where SageTV client reproduces it perfectly. No amount of codec or hardware jostling made me able to dependably watch TV remotely. (I tried on four different hardware setups) I don't know if this may be releated to the above mentioned lack of U.S. NTSC support, maybe?
  
• Not being able to tune a channel that is being either recorded or watched is crazy. I don't want a "No cards found..." message when I try to tune a channel someone else is watching. Why can't I watch the same thing? 1000 people can tune to the same channel without issue in SageTV even though that channel is using the one source. Why in the world should I have to get out of that screen and watch the "recorded" file to work around it? Big peeve for me.
  
• SageTV has far, far, advanced recording options like Favorites, Wishlists, etc. This is such a huge part of a DVR that I am at a loss why MP devoted so little to it. For the record, "For The Record", IMO, is not a good option. It adds more complexity to the system, (more programs, services to worry about, takes over the GUI, and generally removes as much as it adds.) FTR people, please understand me. I used your add-on and it works, and I don't want make as if I didn't find it useful. I am only saying you should never have had to develop it in the first place. I know...harsh. But honest.
  
• SageTV saves in .mpg format. Not the end of the world, but I like that.
  
• SageTV has many built-in features I like, such as being able to play one, or "all" the recordings in a group consecutively, convert recordings on the fly, delete one or "all" recordings in a group.
  
• I can customize the look of many menus from within the program to make it look the way I want.
  
• The "ComSkip" segments show on the video timeline, and I have the option to enable or disable comskip reading on a per program basis (in case the comskip results are poor for that program)
  
• SageTV has a Placeshifter module enabling viewing from anywhere in the world. Not often used, but handy when you just have to watch that episode of Green Acres at postage stamp size.
  
• SageTV IMDB plug-in way more informative than MP IMDB info.
  
• SageTV utilizes MUCH more of the information provided in the XMLTV file. (Original air date, etc) Also Sage offers data on the file itself. (Size, type, when encoded, etc)
  

So there you have it. just what I can think of at the moment. This is not a "Goodbye Media Portal" post. On the contrary, I intend to follow closely the release of the new application, and sincerely wish I was skilled enough as a programmer to assist in making the product more U.S.er friendly" I've done some programming, but I don't believe I am anywhere near the level required for your needs.

I can however indicate what I believe American users might desire. (You know, the regular stuff. Our version will need to be bigger, more arrogant...maybe red white and blue color scheme, etc, etc...

Best of luck with Infinity. I hope some more American programmers will volunteer and stick to it in the future.

I'll be watching.

 

[infinite.loop]

SageTV is the oposit of MP.
It was developed for the US. As result, you will not find so many SageTV users outside the US.

In example, you will not find many users in europe which connect their HTPC to a STB. We just have our TV-Cards inside our HTPC's and directlly connect to the antenna / cabletv / sat-dish.

mpg recording was dropped because of the bug inside windows mpg demuxer which causes that you end up with "no sound" in your recordings. also the *.ts format is literally the same.
for a flawless mpg playback we would need to code our own demuxer (simmilar to our TsReader) which is not worth the effort.

Also a problem is that we can "look" at an application (such as SageTV), but coding the require changes to MP is something totally different.
This is especially a problem if there are tuning issues. you guys do a lot things differently than we do here in europe. even your dvb-s on NA/SA sat is not the same as our dvb-s. and ATSC is another big topic.
so all the support we have so far was created "in the dark" by our european developers.

So what we would really need be 1 or 2 dedicated developers in our team, which are located in the US.

MediaPortal 1 has reached the point where the architecture just can not take more, quite some time ago. During discussions about new features, or useability enhancements, we hit one dead end after the other.

So MediaPortal 1.1.0 will be the last big release. Sadly it wont make things a lot better for users outside europe because we lack the required developers from that area.

But we have a lot planed for MediaPortal 2 and the next generation of our TV-Engine (some points of your list are on our own MP2 wishlist ).
Albert is doing a great job to ensure that the architecture stays flexible enought so that it wont kick our asses in the future, such as MP1 does since about 2 years now.

 

[tourettes]

So what we would really need be 1 or 2 dedicated developers in our team, which are located in the US.

With C++, DirectShow, ATSC and DVB-X knowledge.

We had at one point such skilled developer already in our team (from US) but there was a drunk driver who decided to take life of open source loving husband & father...

 

[pgitta]

So what we would really need be 1 or 2 dedicated developers in our team, which are located in the US.

With C++, DirectShow, ATSC and DVB-X knowledge.

We had at one point such skilled developer already in our team (from US) but there was a drunk driver who decided to take life of open source loving husband & father...

Maybe one of you can move here for a year or two. You can sleep in my basement, and I can get instant 24/7 support.

Will supply [some] food.

No?