MediaPortal Install Guide (1 Viewer)

[damaster]

Very good guide, but there are two things that are bothering me.

1) Asking newbie users to use BETA skin. Not good as it brings its own issues into play.

1) Although it's a BETA skin, it works very well and looks to have a handle on all of it's existing issues. Blue3/Blue3Wide are not without their own issues as well. StreamedMP is leagues ahead of Blue3 in terms of style, professionalism, and "sexy" factor.

I agree, I think Streamed MP is definitely one of the most stylish skins available right now, and I think it's much more attractive to the typical type of person that would be interested in setting up MediaPortal. Plus, with it's installer, it is by far the easiest skin to setup. And because it includes MP-TVSeries and Moving Pictures, it streamlines the setup process that much more.

For something that is more stable I'd maybe suggest Monochrome or Indigo. I would definately not suggest Blue3 or Blue3Wide though as it is still not even distributed with support for the most popular plug-ins (including the ones mentioned in this guide).

Excellent point about the installer. That's another reason why I chose to put StreamedMP in this guide. It makes installation/configuration of the skin and two of the most useful MP plugins all very simple. All the more reason for HTPC users to wanna use StreamedMP: streamlined installation.

 

[damaster]

Updated the screenshots to reflect v0.2.219 of StreamedMP.

 

[moab]

Very good guide, but there are two things that are bothering me.

1) Asking newbie users to use BETA skin. Not good as it brings its own issues into play.

1) Although it's a BETA skin, it works very well and looks to have a handle on all of it's existing issues. Blue3/Blue3Wide are not without their own issues as well. StreamedMP is leagues ahead of Blue3 in terms of style, professionalism, and "sexy" factor.

I agree, I think Streamed MP is definitely one of the most stylish skins available right now, and I think it's much more attractive to the typical type of person that would be interested in setting up MediaPortal. Plus, with it's installer, it is by far the easiest skin to setup. And because it includes MP-TVSeries and Moving Pictures, it streamlines the setup process that much more.

For something that is more stable I'd maybe suggest Monochrome or Indigo. I would definately not suggest Blue3 or Blue3Wide though as it is still not even distributed with support for the most popular plug-ins (including the ones mentioned in this guide).

Thanks for the stability tip . I require the most stable skin (and other setup options) for a client PC used by family who has ZERO tollerence for glitches or bugs. I know this is still Beta but there is no alternative HTPC software that do the things I need.
If Monochrome is stable then I am perplexed as to why the default skin is Blue3 instead of Monochrome/Indigo.
I do agree that the StreamedMP skin looks amazingly professional and I am itching to give it a go.
The Blue skin reminds me of the XP MCE interface and looks old fashioned IMHO.
The other day my 5 year old mocked that MePo characters mouth in Blue3 . I was a bit devastated as I assumed he would like the cute fella. I am running the XMAS mod and thought it would be more family friendly looking.

 

[hulkhaugen]

how did you get that nice perspective view on the movie cover for moving pictures?

 

[globaldonkey]

I think tourettes has a point about introducing a beta skin to newbies. I've found out the hard way that this skin has some problems..... regular crashes particularly when you are in TV Series - probably because I am not using the latest SVN, just 2.0. The thing that is really a problem is that I haven't even be able to successfully get back to the old faithful xface skin yet. TV Series, since installing this skin is now doing strange things in xface, such as displaying fanart in the series view and "permanently" displaying banners in season and episode views. Have reverted all the TV Series settings back to default, uninstalled MP Streamed.... even deleted the TV Series database and recreated it, to no avail.

Screen shot shows what I am talking about, and logs of a crash attached. Can anybody help with getting xface back the way it was with TV Series?

 

[fforde]

I think tourettes has a point about introducing a beta skin to newbies. I've found out the hard way that this skin has some problems..... regular crashes particularly when you are in TV Series - probably because I am not using the latest SVN, just 2.0. The thing that is really a problem is that I haven't even be able to successfully get back to the old faithful xface skin yet. TV Series, since installing this skin is now doing strange things in xface, such as displaying fanart in the series view and "permanently" displaying banners in season and episode views. Have reverted all the TV Series settings back to default, uninstalled MP Streamed.... even deleted the TV Series database and recreated it, to no avail.

Screen shot shows what I am talking about, and logs of a crash attached. Can anybody help with getting xface back the way it was with TV Series?

Of course it's going to crash if you use an old version of TVSeries. StreamedMP and TVSeries have been developed together pretty closely and StreamedMP makes use of many new features recently added to the plug-in. If you use an older version yes it will fail.

But uhh.. it's all distributed right there in the installer. If you are an advanced user and start monkeying around with DLLs, switching versions out, yes you will have problems. If you do a normal install though things will work great. And as far as I am concerned StreamedMP is by far the easiest way to get a large number of features properly configured in MediaPortal with the least amount of effort.

 

[globaldonkey]

My install was a fresh MP 1.0 Final with Xface 1.7, TV-Series 2.0 (latest stable), and Moving Pictures 0.6.4. Nothing else. Didn't mess with dll's, and I guess part of my point was that the guide doesn't mention you should run the latest SVN of TV-Series. I assume that's the advice here? I read the guide, and it says nothing about using the latest SVN of TV-Series.

Anyhoo, something has happened since installing Streamed-MP, and xface now behaves as per the jpg in my previous post, and what I'd really like to know is how to fix that for now.

 

[fforde]

My install was a fresh MP 1.0 Final with Xface 1.7, TV-Series 2.0 (latest stable), and Moving Pictures 0.6.4. Nothing else. Didn't mess with dll's, and I guess part of my point was that the guide doesn't mention you should run the latest SVN of TV-Series. I assume that's the advice here? I read the guide, and it says nothing about using the latest SVN of TV-Series.

Anyhoo, something has happened since installing Streamed-MP, and xface now behaves as per the jpg in my previous post, and what I'd really like to know is how to fix that for now.

You said you were using TVSeries 2.0, but the latest version, distributed with StreamedMP, is 2.1, So I thought you were intentionally using an older DLL. Sorry maybe I am mistaken. If you have done a strait install of StreamedMP with all the options checked, and are still having problems, maybe you should post a bug report in the StreamedMP sub forum.

 

[Spragleknas]

Care to update the post, damaster?

 

[globaldonkey]

Ahhhh, ok. I didn't realise Streamed MP also upgraded TV Series. Thanks John.... I'll repost in the MP Streamed thread. To be fair, I didn't do any reading in the Streamed MP thread, and just followed this guide - it all looked pretty good! And sorry if it sounded like I was having a shot at streamed MP. I wasn't and understood the risks with new code - been with you all the way on Moving Pictures. I just think maybe this thread shouldn't be in the newcomers forum.

Thanks for all your hard work BTW on both this and Moving Pictures. They really make MP look a million dollars.