Replacing MP with Win 8 modern UI (1 Viewer)

tony72

MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • August 15, 2009
    180
    61
    Home Country
    England England
    [...]
    The pc how we know it is goingto die in a few years. A home entertainment system must be everywhere, on every device like tablet (yes Windows rt too) smartphones, smart tv, android set top boxes. This is the future. Not a number of power eating full pcs around the house just to watch tv, some movies and a couple of pictures.
    [...]

    I think Windows RT will be dead long before MediaPortal or x86 PCs. It was conceived when ARM chips had a big energy efficiency lead over x86, but in the time it took to come to market, we now have x86 chips matching ARM in energy efficiency, and being used in smartphones, and so the reason for Windows RT's very existence is no longer valid.
     

    DJBlu

    Portal Pro
    August 14, 2007
    1,670
    813
    Llanelli
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    [...]
    The pc how we know it is goingto die in a few years. A home entertainment system must be everywhere, on every device like tablet (yes Windows rt too) smartphones, smart tv, android set top boxes. This is the future. Not a number of power eating full pcs around the house just to watch tv, some movies and a couple of pictures.
    [...]

    I think Windows RT will be dead long before MediaPortal or x86 PCs. It was conceived when ARM chips had a big energy efficiency lead over x86, but in the time it took to come to market, we now have x86 chips matching ARM in energy efficiency, and being used in smartphones, and so the reason for Windows RT's very existence is no longer valid.

    I have been researching this very info, microsoft I believe are now coming round to the fact that users enjoy the desktop based experience and don't wish to have the start menu thrust on them. Windows Blue is rumoured to allow the user to boot straight to the desktop.

    For those wishing to have an RT type experience there are great strides being made in WebMP which will provide a stop gap. A winner has been announced for the new skin. Look here

    For the full RT Experience then a lot would need to be re-written, it would make sense to start over however this would be a huge undertaking.
     

    jarsve

    Portal Member
    January 26, 2012
    45
    2
    49
    Home Country
    Norway Norway
    Hi. I am in need of a Modern UI Client app for my Surface 2. Its ok that you hate it but i think there is a lot of People wanting it.
     

    foxbenw

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 12, 2011
    232
    47
    Welwyn Garden City
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    I've been using plex on my surface pro for a while now. It's quicker and easier than launching mp1 because it is touch screen friendly. It's unfortunate, as I've grown fond of mp. I'm still using TV server, although only to record, not watch live. The quality of the plex Samsung app has even got me using that a lot of the time in the living room. I still use MP for larger Blu-ray files, but for DVDs it's quicker to launch plex now. I find it sad that the desktop client is becoming less relevant for me. At least if it were fully touch screen friendly I could still try using it on the surface pro.
    I stand by my previous comments. The future of MP, if there is one, is in MP Extended and apps on other OSs. Like plex, really. A Windows ARM app would be nice, but it's still less important than Android and iOS. And from the sound of previous comments, video would need to be transposed rather than streamed for Windows ARM devices.
     

    hafblade

    Portal Pro
    January 19, 2011
    675
    290
    Trier, Germany
    Home Country
    Germany Germany
    I think that they will be relevant but there is imho no better solution than the windows htpc. The video quality is so extremely superior compared to linux and android that I am not able to switch to these
     

    Pat Clark

    Portal Pro
    April 25, 2012
    264
    34
    Wisconsin
    Home Country
    United States of America United States of America
    I came to this discussion from a different perspective. I happened to wonder how a complex project (open source or not) can survive for many many years, without huge manpower and budgets, as the OS underpinnings change over the years.

    It seems clear to me that small(ish) and independent apps are the way to go, each with published interfaces for any required communication, configuration, or whatever. This then reminded me of the Unix philosophy of old with it's piping of small apps, which then led to the Windows 8 screen and the Metro interface.

    It's important, of course, not to reinvent the wheel all the time, but this is "dangerous" if what you rely on is discontinued. (Back in the day, we would require the source to be put in escrow for our use in the event the supplier discontinued the product. Open source projects were not even thought of then.)

    The original poster, back in 2012, saw the Metro UI as a "natural" for an HTPC, incorporating independent apps from different suppliers, each displaying their content in the OS's standard way, one at a time. I'm not intimately familiar with the interactions within the MP software, but it seems to me the biggest percentage of interaction is surely the handling of the screen and maintaining a common "look and feel" -- otherwise, the plugins (built-in or not) seem relatively independent. (The database aspects of clients and servers could be independent as well.)

    A suite of independent apps, all from the same organization, can be imagined which play well together with defined look and feel, central configuration and database management, etc. But unrelated apps, such as a web browser, have no need of being centrally managed.

    MediaPortal 1 is a large, long-lived, complex beast already, and it may be too late to salvage it for the long term, but MP2 may be a vehicle that could take us into the future.
     

    CSMR

    Portal Member
    March 26, 2011
    32
    2
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    "What if i could launch Moving Pictures or My TV Series" straight from the Modern UI, having their tiles lined up next to native apps from Netflix, HBO, Spotify etc. The MP team could still develop the Live-TV, but as an app.
    5 years late to this thread. But this is still a good idea. And now the technology is surely there now, with UWP recently adding .Net Standard 2.0 support (i.e. almost all the functionality of the .Net Framework).

    MediaPortal can develop into separate UWP apps: TV, Video, Music, Photos. Users can then rely on the app store for online media, video calls, and anything else you might want in an HTPC. MediaPortal obviously can't develop all the online media apps internally, and nor can it sustain its own app platform. So in the long run a separate apps strategy makes sense, instead of a monolithic application.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom