Problems with Skins (1 Viewer)

[Christopher Sopko]

I just installed Media Portal on a Windows 8 HP Desktop. I have downloaded the new Avalon skin, but I cannot seem to get it to work. I installed the skin by clicking on the download button from the media portal webpage. It seemed to install correctly, but I cannot find it anywhere in order to make it my default skin. I tried to go back and install it using the media portal extension installer, but it does not show on on the list of available skins to download.

As part of trying to figure out how everything works I used the media portal extension installer to install the "Black Glass Nova HD" skin and I am able to see it in my list of installed extensions. Unfortunately, I do not see a way to make this skin available when I launch the application.

Additionally, I searched for the Avalon skin in the list that shows up in the media portal extension installed, but I do not see it anywhere.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong, or maybe this software is not designed to run on Windows 8 but either way can anyone steer me in the right direction? I have a VERY large video collection of 3,000 ripped DVD's and approximately 90,000 songs that I would like to catalog. If there are specific skins that will accommodate this type of collection I would like to know about them to save some time. Thanks!

 

[JimCatMP]

Hi Chris.

Last question 1st - skin has no real impact on catalog of content - for movies, recommend MovingPictures for Movies & MP TVSeries for TV collections. How easy it is to catalog with both plugins depends on your naming conventions - see Wiki & Forum for specific help as and when needed. Songs - don't have much music content myself, so I just use built in Music plugin & database.

You can than chop & change on skins provided skin supports your plugins (and I think everything supports the two above), find skin that works for you in terms of look & feel - personally I use a lightly mod'ed Frames (bespoke splash screen & main menu images, layout change for MP TVSeries to make fuller use of screen space in listing series within genre & higher contrast TV listings).

As too skins themselves.

Avalon is an EXE, you down load & run it, Black Glass is mpe1 file, so it will be visible in extension manager.

Assume you run & installed Avalon, next step is to run the MPConfiguration tool.

Under GUI would should simply see a list,

Default
Default Wide
Black Glass Nova HD
Avalon

Select skin you want, close the configuration and run MePo, don't like skin, exit, open config, try another.....

Not a Win8 user, but from forum comments, MePo generally seems to do fine in Win8.

TTFN - JCMP