Denmark
I've spent quite a bit of time over the recent weeks to try out different HTPC solutions, and thought I'd share my thoughts on the process - especially since I'm pretty happy with the result ;-)
I bought one of the new Intel NUC's and a HDHomeRun-4DC tuner and installed Windows 8.1 (64-bit) and MP 1.6. Installation was quite smooth and it immediately found the tuner(s). It also had a proper transponder list for my cable provider, and scanning found all my channels (strangely, MP2 alpha 4 did not have this updated transponder file so it didn't find all channels; in the end the UI looked broken with MP2, so I went back to MP 1.6).
I have mixed feelings about TvSetup. On the one hand it allowed me to eventually arrive at a working setup, but I had to open the tool many times to try out different settings or to configure something that I hadn't thought necessary earlier on. I think it'd be a huge step forward if there was some sort of wizard or guide to walk you through the required steps in the right order, but also realize that this is no small task.
I found the channel configuration to be particularly bothersome. In Tvheadend (a Linux PVR) you can define "networks" (signal providers) and then map tuners to providers. For a multi-tuner setup this helps simplify things. Editing channel details, like names and numbers, was also quite painful (as in, time consuming). Oddly, the MP2 TvSetup seemed to preserve the ordering of selected channels when creating a new group, but didn't remember any ordering done in the main channel list (between restarts). In MP1 this was the opposite, so after creating the groups I had to re-order the channels in them.
I also struggled to get MP to see my network shares. The TvService runs as LocalSystem by default and does not appear to have network rights. Using NetworkService acts as the machine on the network, but I couldn't figure out how to make the account password match on the NAS. The solution was to create a custom user and run the TV service as that. I also configured Windows to automatically log in as this user and start MP on boot, so the wife can get things back online if I'm not around.
To make things easier for me to manage, I patched the termsrv.dll in Windows to allow multiple users to be signed in at the same time (the bytes to patch and a link to a free hex editor was easy to find online). I had to use the takeown command on the file for Windows to let me overwrite it, but once that was done, I could log in remotely using remote desktop without disturbing whoever was using MP on the same machine. Very nice!
The client configuration was even more complex - especially once you start adding plugins. One thing that really irks me is that everybody seems to recommend Moving Pictures and MP-TVSeries, so naturally I wanted those as well. But I started out by adding my movie library as shares, so that MP could index them while I was tweaking other stuff. Alas, it turns out they both have their own databases, so that was pretty much a waste. Given the popularity of the two plugins, I think they either should be the default in MP for new installs, or the existing Videos code should be converted to a plugin, so you don't have both available.
After some additional tweaking, I got trakt.tv up and running, customized the Titan skin (menu items and layout), comskip, channel logos, EPG guide, trailers and subtitles downloading. Only thing missing was not having to use keyboard and mouse
I ordered the USB HDMI-CEC adapter from pulse-eight.com, and after a firmware update and latest driver install, the CecRemote plugin in MP worked perfectly. Controlling everything from the existing Samsung TV remote was essential for a high WAF score
Overall I'm quite happy with the result and so far also the stability of the system. The genre color scheme in the EPG is a bit weird and I couldn't find a UI to edit them. There are no comskip markers on recordings, but I hear that should be fixed in 1.7.
One of the big remaining questions is, how do I access all of this from mobile devices (iOS and Android). I tried installing XBMC on the iPad, but it's pretty unstable. Any ideas are most welcome.
Finally, I'd like to give a big thanks to all of Team MediaPortal for creating this software!
I bought one of the new Intel NUC's and a HDHomeRun-4DC tuner and installed Windows 8.1 (64-bit) and MP 1.6. Installation was quite smooth and it immediately found the tuner(s). It also had a proper transponder list for my cable provider, and scanning found all my channels (strangely, MP2 alpha 4 did not have this updated transponder file so it didn't find all channels; in the end the UI looked broken with MP2, so I went back to MP 1.6).
I have mixed feelings about TvSetup. On the one hand it allowed me to eventually arrive at a working setup, but I had to open the tool many times to try out different settings or to configure something that I hadn't thought necessary earlier on. I think it'd be a huge step forward if there was some sort of wizard or guide to walk you through the required steps in the right order, but also realize that this is no small task.
I found the channel configuration to be particularly bothersome. In Tvheadend (a Linux PVR) you can define "networks" (signal providers) and then map tuners to providers. For a multi-tuner setup this helps simplify things. Editing channel details, like names and numbers, was also quite painful (as in, time consuming). Oddly, the MP2 TvSetup seemed to preserve the ordering of selected channels when creating a new group, but didn't remember any ordering done in the main channel list (between restarts). In MP1 this was the opposite, so after creating the groups I had to re-order the channels in them.
I also struggled to get MP to see my network shares. The TvService runs as LocalSystem by default and does not appear to have network rights. Using NetworkService acts as the machine on the network, but I couldn't figure out how to make the account password match on the NAS. The solution was to create a custom user and run the TV service as that. I also configured Windows to automatically log in as this user and start MP on boot, so the wife can get things back online if I'm not around.
To make things easier for me to manage, I patched the termsrv.dll in Windows to allow multiple users to be signed in at the same time (the bytes to patch and a link to a free hex editor was easy to find online). I had to use the takeown command on the file for Windows to let me overwrite it, but once that was done, I could log in remotely using remote desktop without disturbing whoever was using MP on the same machine. Very nice!
The client configuration was even more complex - especially once you start adding plugins. One thing that really irks me is that everybody seems to recommend Moving Pictures and MP-TVSeries, so naturally I wanted those as well. But I started out by adding my movie library as shares, so that MP could index them while I was tweaking other stuff. Alas, it turns out they both have their own databases, so that was pretty much a waste. Given the popularity of the two plugins, I think they either should be the default in MP for new installs, or the existing Videos code should be converted to a plugin, so you don't have both available.
After some additional tweaking, I got trakt.tv up and running, customized the Titan skin (menu items and layout), comskip, channel logos, EPG guide, trailers and subtitles downloading. Only thing missing was not having to use keyboard and mouse
I ordered the USB HDMI-CEC adapter from pulse-eight.com, and after a firmware update and latest driver install, the CecRemote plugin in MP worked perfectly. Controlling everything from the existing Samsung TV remote was essential for a high WAF score
Overall I'm quite happy with the result and so far also the stability of the system. The genre color scheme in the EPG is a bit weird and I couldn't find a UI to edit them. There are no comskip markers on recordings, but I hear that should be fixed in 1.7.
One of the big remaining questions is, how do I access all of this from mobile devices (iOS and Android). I tried installing XBMC on the iPad, but it's pretty unstable. Any ideas are most welcome.
Finally, I'd like to give a big thanks to all of Team MediaPortal for creating this software!