Snapstream Beyond TV (1 Viewer)

[Anonymous]

BTW frodo, back to your question about what Beyond TV has that Media Portal doesn't: The list is far to lengthy to come up with. I do however really appreciate the work that has gone into Media Portal. I think that one day the TV module will provide a good alternative. But as it goes right now the differences are numerous. The entire Beyond TV engine works quite differently than MP my tv.

If you aren't aware of the differences I encourage you to give their trial a go, you may be able to grab some functionality ideas from the interface.

The biggest difference for me right now though, continues to be the fact that Beyond TV works with my equipment and Media Portal does not.

 

[rusten]

Wheemer,
I understand that the details might take a lot to delve into; however, as users of the free MP, we all sort of implicitly accept the responsibility of being as helpful as possible, to the software developers (Frodo & Co) who've donated thousands of hours to offer the MP solution free-of-charge to us.

If you are truly interested in seeing the new features, it would be a good idea to try and write out a wishlist with some detail, particularly while you have Frodo's attention. Being a developer myself, I would suspect that by placing this burden on Frodo, you're significantly reducing the chance that your intended improvements won't ever be addressed.

Even if you were writing SS/BeyondTV with a feature request, while paying good money for their software, I would still expect you would have to provide detail, and those people are being paid to listen where as I don't believe Frodo receives any tremendous value from adding MP features he cannot use himself.

Just a suggestion in hopes we can all do our part in helping improve MP.

 

[FullMoon]

Here are the main features from Beyondtv that I look for. I have not fully explored the tv plugin and I will (right now I'm busy trying to clean up my recipe categories).

COntrol directv receiver - I use a serial cable, if I buy an IR blaster it will be myblaster, probably USB.

Downloading directv channel guide - I tried unsuccesfully using xmltv importer, but I'm sure the second go around will be more successful since I sortof know what I'm doing now.

Ability to search for movies by title (at least a two week program guide)

Ability to view/record multiple inputs - I have an AIW and a pvr250, each has antenna through coax and svideo from satelite. I can record two shows simultaneously, and have local channels assigned to coax and satelite to s viseo, two gudes, four inputs, two cards.

THey have a bunch of streaming functions which honestly I can live without, streaming livetv over a wifi to my pocketpc was nice.

Show padding - ability to add an extra minute before or after a show, and ability to individually edit shows for input, padding, quality.

And of course adjustible qualities for recordings (higher quality for high action, etc)

THey have a show conversion that I never use (showsqueeze), they also have a smartchapter that recognizes most (not all) commercial breaks and makes an xml file so you can skip commercials with one click.

Manual record, a setting to record within the next 30 days, ability to record all episodes or all new episodes, integrated conflict management to reschedule recordings if they are missed or if a higher priority recording conflicts (oh yeah, recording priorities)

Sortable shows (episode, folder, etc) in recorded show section.

That's about it for now. you got any others Wheemer?
Here are a few things they don't have which I've been asking for

Closed captions
recommended recordings
ability to prioritize inputs, so it only uses the AIW for recording if it absolutely has to
improved playback - there is tearing with high action in their player, doesn't show up in other players for same resolution.

So, when I get some time over the holidays, I will start playing with the tv module and provide better feedback. I plan on using btv and MP for a while, but will do what I can to help with the MP tv module.

 

[Anonymous]

I'll make my own list so that yours is not influencing my requests... Also keep in mind that I have not been able to use the My TV function yet due to problems listed above, after further reading I think it might be because I'm using the latest hauppauge drivers.

The viewscape HUD is really important, I like transparency and show information as in BTV.

Support for other IR devices, I use HEremote to control MyBlaster, seems like an easy program to work with.

Better TV card setup (in reference to my problem)

Transparent On-Screen guide overlay.

Multi lineup, multi tuner, multiple input capabilities.

I am mainly concerned with the look of the experience, I didn't much like the guide or the layout of My TV for some reason.

This software would have the primary job of offering timeshifting and the ability to record the shows I want. I think that timeshifting should be set in the configuration and in the FSUI it should always timeshift using hardware or software cards. Not sure if this is the case now or not. It just seems slightly confussing with the buttons on the left. Also the tv input should just turn on by itself instead of having to click that button.


If I could get the channel to scan properly I'd be able to test it a little further.

Thanks, and I really do wish the best to this software, I think the rest of it rocks!

 

[cfaslave]

Beyond TV with Media Portal

I know this thread is all but dead, but I wanted to see if anyone has had success in running Media Portal along with Beyond TV (BTV) as the PVR. If anyone has any input on this I would welcome it. It's my hope that I can use media portal as the front end and eventually move over from BTV as well. For now, BTV has to remain my main PVR.

Thanks,

 

[ZetaVu]

Hey Brent, I avoid putting too much detail in the Snapstream forums as that would be inappropriate, but here's what I'm doing.

While I have BM, I only use it for the pse picture slideshow plugin cncb made, other than that I use Media Portal for everything but tv. I prefer BTV for tv, since I owna copy already, am comfortable with it and it does everything tv wise I need (of course I own it, if I didn't already have it I might have different opinions) As a note I don't use the BM DVD library, I convert most DVD's to xvids if I keep them on my hard drive.

I normally don't run Media Portal constantly, I launch it from my remote when I want it, mostly because my htpc is old and I want to conserve memory, once I upgrade I plan to have windows boot directly into Media Portal and launch btv in the background, and have a link from Media Portal to go directly to BTV (as well as a swap button programmed on my remote)

I have not run into any issues having both run simultaneously. While I use BTV for most video viewing, I use Media Portal's video for when I want to string clips together into a playlist, letting me navigate inside video clips and jump between them like DVD chapters. Especially useful for home movies. Media Portal actually had better video playback quality than BTV, although with 4.x BTV has closed the gap. I like the btv interface better, but the MP team has done a great job improving their video interface so now I'm comfortalbe with either.

Music, Media Portal is superior in every way. THe MPBlue plugin lets me interact two way with my PDA, and the Lyrics plugin is developing, hopefully to let me read lyrics in id3 and maybe even lrc files. No album art cache issues, the sorts are completely custumable (I can sort by year, etc, categries that no other music player offers) and there are smoother shortcust to fullscreen visuals, playslists, etc. No contest here.

Weather module is the best ever, multiple locations, multiple animated maps per location.

For the DVD player, I have MP launch my ati player (an option in settings, another reason MP is so versatile), again, strictly because of my older video card. When I upgrade I'll give this a better look.

Pictures, BM has the edge only because of the PSE plugin that lets me put multiple tags on pictures using Photoshop elements (in effect, like id3 data to an mp3 file). I am hoping something similar can be developed for MP, as this lets you make really relevant slideshows, great for parties with music in background.

Other plugins I like, the recipe, games, trailers, X10 Home Automation, newsreader, email, internet radio, sudoku, these just name a few. I have not found a plugin like the theater plugin listing local theaters and movie times, I hope this comes soon. I have not looked into a dvd library plugin.

You have the option of loading BTV to launch from Programs, or putting shortcuts higher, have nto looked into this, I launch with my remote. I do nothing with the Media Portal tv at this time, it would involve arranging XTML data and setting up capture cards, and I use a serial controller for my directv box, which would take some effort to transfer over. THere is no link capability for livetv, and I don't believe any Orb type streaming over internet either. I don't think they have HD capbility yet, but again I specifically have not looked into it.

I think Media Portal would make an ideal front end for BTV (for those that have it) and those that use the tv function seem very happy as well. For now am giving what support I can to both Beyond Media and Media Portal. Let me know how you do, we seem to be in the same boat.

 

[ZetaVu]

Oh, they also have a web browser that's not too bad, it needs an onscreen keyboard though. I still use Opera since it has autozoom, might switch to Firefox. I have not found a good on screen keyboard that works like the one in BTV (use the arrow keys to navigate and the enter button to select letters) Ideal goal is to never need a mouse type remote with Media Portal, and in most cases no keyboard.

 

[cfaslave]

Zeta,
Thanks for the info. I downloaded MP on my laptop last week to play around with it. Looks promising so I'm trying it out on my main PC with the tuners today. I wonder if Craig (cncb) could be persuaded to write plugins for MP? He has the skills, but I think he's waiting to see what Snapstream's going to do with BM.

Brent

 

[ZetaVu]

I've mentioned it to him, it's an excellent feature. Ideally Media Portal is looking ot have everything open source, so requiring PSE does limit appeal. WHat would truly be excellent is if there was a way to apply tags directly to say picture and video files in Media Portal like we are able to with mp3 files through their id3 tags. THen we could not only make custom photoslideshows on the whim but also theme oriented video playlists. Say I bring in my fishing buddies, I can pull out from a tag I call fishing, and not have to store all the files in the same directory to access them (they could be chronological, letting me look at everything from 2001 for example as well)

Sadly, I lack the programming skill, so I help with beta testing and ideas where I can.

 

[cfaslave]

o.k. I've been trying to set up my movies in a similar fashion as I have with Beyond Media's DVD Library Plugin. I'm having lots of problems. I have a combination of DVD rips (ifo, vob etc files) and mpeg files in multiple drives. Each movie has its own directory.

e.g. c:/media/movies, d:/media/movies each with multiple folders under them with the movies name being the folder name.

I can't seem to get this set up to play the movies right. I've tried MyMovies to import from DVD Profiler but not with much success. Secondly, For the DVD's on the hard drive that it does recognize, it shows the movie name in the list, but then also shows the video_ts.ifo file and each vob file after you select the movie. I must be doing multiple things wrong. Can anyone point me in the right direction to get started? Thanks,