Canada
Just wanted to say hi!
I tried to try MythTV on a Linux box but could not get the TV card to display nor the blu-ray player to play any DVD, blu-ray or otherwise with any stand alone players. Strange thing is we have two other Linux boxes with non-blu-ray DVD players that work fine with the stand alone players (all Ubuntu/MythBuntu). So I can't say that MythTV didn't work since we didn't get that far.
I tried LinuxMCE but couldn't get past the install as it kept freezing up. I'm thinking its related to the same problem as above, not having drivers and/or codecs or something (though we tried every config "how to" we could find).
I tried SageTV under Windows but wasn't all that impressed. It crashed 2-3 times a day, couldn't handle aspect ratios gracefully, and had a horrid video organization scheme e.g. add each recorded video manually through a file requester by navigating to each VIDEO_TS directory manually. Sorting didn't appear to exist, it just showed a disc icon with the cryptic DVD disc title in it. I also had trouble with poor remote control response but that turned out to be my ignorance and not Sage's fault.
Been working on MediaPortal for a few days and I'm finally starting to "get it". I found configuring TV quite daunting partly because it seems the choices are split between TV server config and MediaPortal config and a newb like me doesn't know what is found where or why they are where they are.
Scanning channels was a mess the first time though I think that might have a tiny bit to do with the fact I had the TV cable connected to the FM coax connector 8). Once I figured that out I scanned again and ended up with a holy mess as the previous scan's data wasn't automagically erased and the new scan just added channels which didn't end up in numerical order.
After some searching around I finally found the clear channels button on a different page and I'm waiting for scan #3 to complete. Seems to me that a clear channels button should appear on the scan page instead of or in addition to the other page. Perhaps a pop-up requester asking if you want to clear existing data first would be good.
Other than that its been pretty easy. Pointed the config to the ROOT of my recorded video directory tree and that was that - just drill down through my directories to play the video I was looking for (alphabetical etc) and play away.
Oh, thats another thing - In SageTV I could never see the selected option on a DVD menu so I always had to hope PLAY was selected and go for broke. If it wasn't then I'd have to randomly hit the scroll buttons and see if I'd found play. In MediaPortal the menus work fine (its a big relief let me tell ya!).
So, other than my own incompetence I'm not having any issues with MediaPortal at all. Good Job! Or as we Canuck Navy guys say "Bravo Zulu!".
P.S. Actually there is one question - does anyone know if the HVR-1800 remote counts as an MCE remote or as a Hauppage remote? In SageTV it was a Phillips remote, not MCE or Hauppage. I set it to MCE but if I type in a channel number and hit enter I don't get that channel. Not sure if its a remote problem or some other config issue.
I tried to try MythTV on a Linux box but could not get the TV card to display nor the blu-ray player to play any DVD, blu-ray or otherwise with any stand alone players. Strange thing is we have two other Linux boxes with non-blu-ray DVD players that work fine with the stand alone players (all Ubuntu/MythBuntu). So I can't say that MythTV didn't work since we didn't get that far.
I tried LinuxMCE but couldn't get past the install as it kept freezing up. I'm thinking its related to the same problem as above, not having drivers and/or codecs or something (though we tried every config "how to" we could find).
I tried SageTV under Windows but wasn't all that impressed. It crashed 2-3 times a day, couldn't handle aspect ratios gracefully, and had a horrid video organization scheme e.g. add each recorded video manually through a file requester by navigating to each VIDEO_TS directory manually. Sorting didn't appear to exist, it just showed a disc icon with the cryptic DVD disc title in it. I also had trouble with poor remote control response but that turned out to be my ignorance and not Sage's fault.
Been working on MediaPortal for a few days and I'm finally starting to "get it". I found configuring TV quite daunting partly because it seems the choices are split between TV server config and MediaPortal config and a newb like me doesn't know what is found where or why they are where they are.
Scanning channels was a mess the first time though I think that might have a tiny bit to do with the fact I had the TV cable connected to the FM coax connector 8). Once I figured that out I scanned again and ended up with a holy mess as the previous scan's data wasn't automagically erased and the new scan just added channels which didn't end up in numerical order.
After some searching around I finally found the clear channels button on a different page and I'm waiting for scan #3 to complete. Seems to me that a clear channels button should appear on the scan page instead of or in addition to the other page. Perhaps a pop-up requester asking if you want to clear existing data first would be good.
Other than that its been pretty easy. Pointed the config to the ROOT of my recorded video directory tree and that was that - just drill down through my directories to play the video I was looking for (alphabetical etc) and play away.
Oh, thats another thing - In SageTV I could never see the selected option on a DVD menu so I always had to hope PLAY was selected and go for broke. If it wasn't then I'd have to randomly hit the scroll buttons and see if I'd found play. In MediaPortal the menus work fine (its a big relief let me tell ya!).
So, other than my own incompetence I'm not having any issues with MediaPortal at all. Good Job! Or as we Canuck Navy guys say "Bravo Zulu!".
P.S. Actually there is one question - does anyone know if the HVR-1800 remote counts as an MCE remote or as a Hauppage remote? In SageTV it was a Phillips remote, not MCE or Hauppage. I set it to MCE but if I type in a channel number and hit enter I don't get that channel. Not sure if its a remote problem or some other config issue.
