Moving from Vista MCE (1 Viewer)

[Wavemachine]

Hi,

I am new here and would appreciate your advice.

Currently I run Vista MCE and have been looking at Media Portal for sometime.

The main reason I want to move from MCE is I want support TV for chanels from multiple sources i.e. DVB-T and DVB-S including high definition.

My system has a Dual Tuner Hauppage DVB-T500 and a Compro Vidoemate S350 in it, I did try Media Portal on an old PC with XP MCE but it was really unstable but that was probably due to the system having only 512MB of RAM.

My concern is the only other PC I have is my Vista MCE system which is the central hub of familly entertainment and am wondering if I install Medial Portal will that disable all the MCE services whilst I try it and should it go wrong will an uninstallation restore everything back as it was.

The other application I have which is launchable from Vista MCE out of the tin is Arcsoft Total Media Theatre for BluRay playback presumably I will be able to launch this from MP.

I really appreciate any help and guidance you can give me.

FYI my MCE PC has 2GB of RAM, AM2 5400+ and an ATI 256MB 3450 GPU.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

My concern is the only other PC I have is my Vista MCE system which is the central hub of familly entertainment and am wondering if I install Medial Portal will that disable all the MCE services whilst I try it and should it go wrong will an uninstallation restore everything back as it was.

Think I would setup MP without TV first, you can always add TV afterwards, this way you can tinker away to your hearts content without doing any damage to mce, yes MP when run will stop your mce services, but a reboot will reset this, so don't tinker when a recording is due

Because of the configurable nature of MP, it may take a little while to setup, so do not try rushing

Obviously doing it this way, you do not need things like MPTray, which start MediaPortal from green button on remote, because you will launch MCE as well, but disabling MCE is most probably one of the last things you would want to do anyway.

 

[Wavemachine]

Thanks for the reply, that sounds like a good way to get me up and running.

I will give it a go.

 

[dancake]

How about a partition?

This may not be good advice but it worked for me..

I was running Vista MCE with my DVB-T dual tuner ok but frustrated that I could not use DVB-C so I made a small partition big enough for Vista and Installed a fresh Vista/ Mediaportal on it. default boot was my untouched Vista and the new one was selected when I wanted to play with it. On the new OS I have disabled all Vista MCE services and used a reg hack so my MCE remote can be used with mediaportal fully (otherwise certain buttons start MCE up! )

Indeed it has taken quite a few weeks to get MP stable and usable enough, but it is so good now that I wont go back to Vista MCE. I am using the StreamedMP skin, with MyTVSeries/ Moving pictures which looks fab and is not offered by MCE. I also use my Dual DVB-T and a DVB-C card with no glitches! The XMLTV GUI web based web epg ensures all my sceduled recordings work ok too!

What I have done now is shrunk my old partition and extended my new one and changed the default boot.

The old one is there for "Backup" in case anything goes wrong with MP and Eastenders needs recording