MediaPortal == bad software architecture ? (Feedback) (1 Viewer)

[Ice_Black]

I have been comparing Media Portal between "Vista Media Center " and "Nebula Digi-TV"

The performance of GUI in Media Portal needed to be improved. In Microsoft Media Center it is pretty fast when navigating.

Graphical Interface in Media Portal need to be redesigned., Take a look at Vista Media Centre GUI - it is very nice!


Resize Window (or maximize) will switch TV OFF automatically in Media Portal (annoying huh?).. Sound like bad software architecture? In Nebula Digi-TV I can resize window - it does not freeze/glitch and does not switch TV OFF.

When switching between channels, it is 1 second slow... in Nebula Digi-TV it is almost instant!

The features in Media Portal is excellent but performance need to do a lot better.

 

[Nemulate]

Good job MP2 is being worked on! Thanks for the comment anyway

 

[infinite.loop]

We all know about the design flaws of MediaPortal 1.
Thats the whole point of starting to work on MediaPortal 2, which we will shift our attention to after the MediaPortal 1.0 final release.
That TV goes off when you resize TV, is a "fix" to avoid that MP crashes. Thats also a flaw in MP 1 design.
But keep in mind that MP is meant to be used as HTPC application and not a MediaPlayer which you run in window mode.

If you dont like the skin, download one made by the community. There are realy great ones available.

Btw. since you complain about the channelswitch times.
If you didn't use the TV-Server then thank Microsoft for the slow zaptimes. MediaPortal uses the Microsoft SBE engine for TV.

With the MediaPortal TV-Server zapping is as fast as it can get on dvb and analog.
Only limit is your TV-Card/driver/codec.

 

[Ice_Black]

We all know about the design flaws of MediaPortal 1.
Thats the whole point of starting to work on MediaPortal 2, which we will shift our attention to after the MediaPortal 1.0 final release.
That TV goes off when you resize TV, is a "fix" to avoid that MP crashes. Thats also a flaw in MP 1 design.
But keep in mind that MP is meant to be used as HTPC application and not a MediaPlayer which you run in window mode.

Btw. since you complain about the channelswitch times.
If you didn't use the TV-Server then thank Microsoft for the slow zaptimes. MediaPortal uses the Microsoft SBE engine for TV.

With the MediaPortal TV-Server zapping is as fast as it can get on dvb and analog.
Only limit is your TV-Card/driver/codec.

Yeah I am using TV-Server with MediaPortal. I think 1 sec channel switch time is slow. Have you tried Nebula Digi-TV software? it is almost instant channel switch. Also If you use Sky Digital Box - channel switch is fast too.

In MediaPortal 2.. what will happen to TV when resizing window? Will it switch it off?

MediaPortal Team is dong great work but please focus on performance and stability which is top priority.

 

[infinite.loop]

Yeah I am using TV-Server with MediaPortal. I think 1 sec channel switch time is slow.
Have you tried Nebula Digi-TV software? it is almost instant channel switch. Also If you use Sky Digital Box - channel switch is fast too.

thats an "interesting" thought, because if you take a look how DigitalVideoBroadcast works, then you will find out that there is no such thing like "instant" zapping.

At the moment you receive the first bit, you do not get a picture. Depending on your boradcaster, 0.5 to 1 seconds will pass until you received enought data to actually display video and play audio.
thats the downside of dvb.

In your case i would take a look at which codecs you used in the different applications, because they do have an impact on that.

In MediaPortal 2.. what will happen to TV when resizing window? Will it switch it off?

There isnt even a TV-Plugin yet for MP2. We have our targets, but at some point you hit limitations (i.e. directX based) you can't do anything about.

MediaPortal Team is dong great work but please focus on performance and stability which is top priority.

You are new here as it seems so you cant know that.
MediaPortal and the TV-Server are in a FeatureFreeze since more then half a year now (nearly one).
The purpose of that is to fix open bugs, get rid of some bad useability and improove stability.

But if you fix Bug A, then it is possible that you introduce Bug B and C. Thats partly caused by the design of MediaPortal 1, but thats also how software-development on a complex system works like.

After the release of MediaPortal 1 it will be set to "maintainance only". Means that we wont introduce more "big changes".
Just a few smaller ones.

All the cool new stuff will goe directly to MediaPortal one.
But do not expect a "fully working" software before mid/end 2009.