IMO, this is the one most important thing lacking from Mediaportal, that's keeping me from using it instead of Media Center or PowerDVD for movie playing...
The ability to natively read DVD, HD-DVD and BLU-RAY folders from a hard drive directly.
My setup is Vista Ultimate w/Media Center, Nvidia 8800 GTS going DVI -> HDMI to my Samsung 32" widescreen TV.
I also purchased the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive, as a lot of people are doing (since it's only $200, vs. $500+ for any standalone player). I plan on using this only to make "managed copies" to a hard drive, so I don't have to worry about disc scratches or those kind of issues during play.
So far, there's no support in Mediaportal for HD-DVD at all, I can browse to the the folder, but nothing is shown. I did see the DVD workaround (making an ISO file)... but this is an inconvenient pain (IMO).
To do that the Mediaportal way, I have to take my existing DVD folder, somehow encode it again to an .iso file, then fumble with loading the .iso into Daemon Tools, THEN load Mediaportal.
The way it should work, IMO, is like Media Center does it... select a folder (or folders) to have as your DVD collection, put your DVD folders in there, and each movie can be read directly off the hard drive with just one click. Simple, effective.
I overall think Mediaportal is on the right track, but these two things (HD support and direct DVD folder support) are the two things still keeping me from using it full-time....
The ability to natively read DVD, HD-DVD and BLU-RAY folders from a hard drive directly.
My setup is Vista Ultimate w/Media Center, Nvidia 8800 GTS going DVI -> HDMI to my Samsung 32" widescreen TV.
I also purchased the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive, as a lot of people are doing (since it's only $200, vs. $500+ for any standalone player). I plan on using this only to make "managed copies" to a hard drive, so I don't have to worry about disc scratches or those kind of issues during play.
So far, there's no support in Mediaportal for HD-DVD at all, I can browse to the the folder, but nothing is shown. I did see the DVD workaround (making an ISO file)... but this is an inconvenient pain (IMO).
To do that the Mediaportal way, I have to take my existing DVD folder, somehow encode it again to an .iso file, then fumble with loading the .iso into Daemon Tools, THEN load Mediaportal.
The way it should work, IMO, is like Media Center does it... select a folder (or folders) to have as your DVD collection, put your DVD folders in there, and each movie can be read directly off the hard drive with just one click. Simple, effective.
I overall think Mediaportal is on the right track, but these two things (HD support and direct DVD folder support) are the two things still keeping me from using it full-time....