New to Mediaportal. quick questions (1 Viewer)

[subdaman]

Hi guys, i am new to mediaportal and would like a few answers please.


1. What is the fastest way to bootup with mediaportal? (ANY OS)
2. What kind of boot times are we looking at?
3. Will Mediaportal ever be a standalone application?
4. I have found that on my old systems, it tends to slow down after a while. Any way of changing this?

thanks in advance.

 

[Baboonanza]

Hi,

1. Using an SSD and Windows 7.
2. Depends. My Windows 7, i5-750, 4GB, SSD system goes from post to MP in <30 seconds. But thats with the default skin and no plugins. My actual HTPC with loads of plugins, a much slower processor and normal HDD is more like 90 seconds, maybe longer. I leave it on though.
3. MP IS a standalone application. If you mean will it ever be like XBMC Live, then the answer is no.
4. It depends what the problem is. You could be running out of RAM (especially if using older versions of MP as there were some memory leaks), it could be a fragmented HDD, it could be XP getting clogged up. You haven't given any useful information to help determine the problem.

Hope that helps.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I agree with Baboonanza, memory leaks on older versions of MP were common place, if you have a lot of fanart\backdrops this caused havoc.

 

[robbo100]

MP will allow you to hibernate when not being used, so it is quicker to "wake up" the HTPC, which is about 15 seconds for me.

Robbo100

 

[subdaman]

Thanks for the quick replies guys...

1. Re: SSD and windows 7, if i manage to make it boot off a read only image on a CF card, would it be faster than SSD? Does Mediaportal actually need to write info ? (except for the media info somewhere else?) Has anyone tried MP on XPE? something like a ROM like environment?

2. Thanks for the bit abt the memory leak thing. I checked it out and it is actually mediaportal 1 that i use. Are there any other versions that i should be aware of?


My main objective is to have a very fast startup so that it's seamless... i tried out XBMC but unfortunately due to some issues ( i don't know what exactly) XBMC refuses to run properly on my system.

 

[Baboonanza]

1- A decent SSD is going to be about 5x faster than a CF card. A 7200rpm HDD might be be faster. Plus if you wanted Windows 7 you'd need at least a 30GB one, so I'm not even sure it would save you money. I'd recommend the Intel 40-V SSD if you go down that road.

2- The RC candidates (latest is 5) are actually very stable, I run RC3. And there will be a final veriosn 1.1.0 in a few weeks AFAIK. You can always CloneZilla your drive before testing it.

If you want a seamless & quick startup you just need to hibernate it, that way you might be able to wake it with the remote too. I've had some problems with TV and hibernate (though there are ways round this), but if you're looking at XBMC then rpesumably you don't want TV anyway.

 

[subdaman]

Thanks for the info mate...

You are right, i am not really looking at tv... i had issues with tv and hibernate as well (in the past) ..

I will check out the SSD you mentioned and the RC's... Thanks for pointing me in the right direction guys.. much appreciated!

edit: Just to check regarding the SSD, is it the Intel® X25-V ?
http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/apac/eng/products/nand/feature/index.htm

 

[Baboonanza]

Your link didn't work but yes, sorry I got the name wrong! This one:
Scan.co.uk: SSDSA2MP040G2R5 - 40GB Intel X25-V, MLC-Flash, 2.5", 1x SATA 3Gb/s, Read 170MB/s, Write 35MB/s, Retail

It's a very good balance of performance and price. The 60GB Corsair Reactor should also be good, though you'd need to find a benchmark to be sure.

 

[subdaman]

Thanks for that..

I have been looking into nlite and Xpe and other things to make the OS footprint smaller and then possibly might integrate MP as the default shell instead of explorer.exe.

Will post results soon.

 

[kiwijunglist]

There is an older forum post that details how to get windows and mediaportal to boot off a read only compact flash card. It seemed quite complicated. If you want your HTPC to go on faster why don't you use S3 sleep instead of a cold boot?

OH! - FYI -> There is also a guide in the MPwiki on replacing the default explorer.exe shell with mediaportal too ;-P

What would be cool, would be if someone could list all the items in services.msc and msconfig that can be disabled, or if someone could list what services are essential to mediaportal running.