Recommend me a setup... (1 Viewer)

[cheetah05]

Ok...well I am coming back to MediaPortal for a while after using Vista Media Center.

I have been out of the MediaPortal loop for a while now and was wondering "what's hot".

Basically my setup is: No TV Card, 1920*1200 resolution, 8600GTm, T7250 2.0GHz, 4GB RAM, Vista HP x64, 5400rpm HDD (you may ask why I mention the speed of the HDD - its because I think its important). My remote will be the Sony PS3 Bluetooth Remote, but I have already created a MediaPortal plugin for that so it's not an issue. Codecs are not an issue either....can play everything perfectly.

Now my main concern at the moment is that MP 1.0 RC3 takes 49 seconds to load to a usable state, whereas Vista Media Center only takes 8 seconds...and for a Part-time media center user who loads it on-demand, it can be quite frustrating....is there anyway to reduce this load time?

Basically I want to use MediaPortal as a front-end for watching browsing through movies (with coverart etc) and my TV series (My TV Series Plugin) with a half decent skin that looks good and has a readable interface....what skin do you recommend....chances are that I will only be using the basic screen as I will only have the TV series, Movies, Weather and possibly another plugin enabled....what skin do you recommend?

When adding movies to the database, is there any way to get it NOT to recurse the directory you set so it only scans the root directory?

Also is there any plugin to interface the online tv catchup services provided by BBC, ITV, channel 4 and Five yet? If so link?

Thanks.

 

[Spragleknas]

Hi cheetah05 - welcome back

49 sec. sounds strange - could you perhaps UL your logs? (Just start/kill MP - capture logs)

Recommended skins?
Well - I perfer Indigo, but Aeon is a great alternative.
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...0d1217547060-aeon-wide-1366x768-aeon-wide.jpg
Both are very well supported. (Indigo is tidier IMO - but Aeon just has that extra....). Also, have a look here.

PS: Have a look at Moving Pictures

 

[cheetah05]

Thanks for the recommendations.

As for the 49 seconds....strange, but it now seems to be loading in just over 8 seconds....wierd, if the problem comes back, I shall post some logs as suggested.

Just tried out XBMC and that loads in 2 seconds...thats pretty damn quick!

 

[rtv]

MP is designed to run on HTPCs possibly for weeks without a restart - that's why startup time does not have much priority.
As a .NET app it's much faster after first startup (compiling for your machine) and will benefit from a fast hard disk.