New to MP... (1 Viewer)

[Pingu]

Have a new setup and wanted to try some home entertainment software and went to meedio firstly but not being a techy and their recent announcement I decided to steer clear. Found this site and it seems you have a community thing going on and have a lot to say about the product. I was wondering if you guys could answer a few questions to settle things for me....

1) Meedio now bought out by Yahoo was an impressive peice of software, does this compare?

2) A lot of media software concentrates on TV recording which tbh isn't something I am interested in (yet!). I want a basic PC to plasma setup so I can watch downloaded films (primarily Sky broadband downloads), is this the software for me?

3) As mentioned some films on Sky broadband were not working on Meedio, should MediaPortal have the same problem?

Any advice appreciated but please no 'read the forum' replies, the problem with that is often there are so many posts I get lost and people forget that newbies don't like technical jargon

Grateful for any replies

Pingu

 

[Spragleknas]

READ THE FORUM STICIES!!!!

Just kidding.... 8)

First: WELCOME TO THE MP FORUM

I can only answer you q. in some extent;

I belive MediaPortal is better than Meedio - based on redings and own exp.

MediaPortal is openSource, so it won't/can't get bought, I belive.

downloaded films (primarily Sky broadband downloads)

I dont know what this is, but MP can play just about every movie you throw at it... if you want, you can use an external player (like BSPlayer - which integrates great).

MP has allready more feutures then MCE and Meedio, I belive - and more are on the way (see the "plugins" section), i.e. torrent support, my planner, RSS, suduko and other games, remopte voice controll, X10 home etc.... etc... etc...

I belive you will be very happy with MP, but remember; It (0.2, that is) is still a RC/beta (final release soon, I belive)

 

[ASiDiE]

First off, Welcome. I am glad you took the time to come on over here and take a look at what we have to offer.

If you look at meedio as a whole... yes, it is a impressive piece of software. What I mean by whole.. is all the of the plug-ins that go along with meedio. Meedio has some features and plug-ins I would love to use with MP.

If you purchased Meedio yesterday and installed it on your machine I think you would have a fine product. (after downloading some plug-ins). As for some of the main things in a media center (pictures, music, Video) I think we do things equal to meedio... if not better. As for TV... I think we are way head of meedio in that aspect.

I use MP for watching a lot of recorded and downloaded shows. Everything I have thrown at MP... it seems to play them without a problem. We would need to download a sample of video to see if there was an issue with your sky downloads.

There are hundreds of people here to help you with any problems you have. That’s the biggest reason I am here. If I had a problem.. I could talk to the guys here... hit IRC... and talk to the people who are responsible for this wonderful product. This closeness, this community... I wouldn't trade for anything.

 

[Pingu]

Ok this sounds good and many thanks for the replies they are appreciated. To pin point my problem...

I have now downloaded MP and I am impressed, it looks great. Seems to do what I need it to do but the Sky downloaded films do not work here either :x

I am from the UK (in case that matters :shock: ) and we have a premium service supplied to us by Sky called Sky Broadband (google it). It is a relatively new service and it just allows you to download films and watch them on a 30 day license. So far no problem but I do not like watching films on my plasma using Windows media player :twisted: (sorry for swearing).

The film played on WMP works fine on both PC and the downstairs plasma but as soon as I go into MP movies the system does nothing and will not play the film, although it does see it in the directory. All other films in the same directory work fine.

Sky broadband is an up and coming service and I was wondering if anyone had experienced the problem and has a solution or can hazard a guess why this film type won't run?

Thanks for your time.

Pingu

 

[Spragleknas]

Try changing video codec;

Open MediaPortal Setup

Movies -> Movie Player -> (Settings)


If "no go", then try using External Mediaplayer (like BSPlayer or Media Player Classic - BSPlyer has settings which make it "blend" nice with MP)

 

[James]

Most likely the files have some kind of DRM.

If this is the case, it may limit the players able to support them.

/James

 

[Efros]

Knowing the money hungry types at Sky I would put money on the DRM.

 

[Pingu]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :wink:

Nice one guys the external media player sorted the issue, even though I dislike WMP at least I don't have to come out of MP when I want to watch a film now.

One more intial problem, I have an extensive music collection sitting on my hard drive (second sata) but MP is only recognising the first 20 albums, I have told it where to look for them again but it won't display more than 20 ish albums. Simple solutions on a postcard please.

Alternatively post here and I am one step nearer to my desired setup 8)

Thanks in anticipation.

Pingu

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Pingu

Open configuration\music\folder\add manually link to folder where music files are stored, should pull in all files/folders.
Yep sky uses drm so WMP will play ok within MP (as default player).

8)

 

[tomtom21000]

there was a bug in mp concerning the 20 albums issue.
don´t know which version you are using. think it was solved quite a while ago. best try the release candidate 4 from today and see if the problem still arises. might be necessary to rescan the music database.

tomtom