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MediaPortal 1
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<blockquote data-quote="Frodo" data-source="post: 19527" data-attributes="member: 10277"><p>Here is my opinon:</p><p></p><p>1. Mediaportal is still in beta phase. I don't see how anybody can expect beta software to be fully stable</p><p></p><p>2. You guys are requesting a stable version, but at the same time </p><p>i see >1000 feature requests in the forums. This conflicts and it is not possible to please everybody. We cannot stop adding new features to make MP stable because users demand new features </p><p></p><p>3. i think 80% of all problems are related with the My TV plugin. All the other modules are pretty stable</p><p></p><p>4. Reason TV causes all the problems is because :</p><p>MediapPortal Team:</p><p> - bugs (offcourse)</p><p> - the fact we're volunteers and dont have 40hrs/week to work on My TV</p><p> - the fact that there are just 2 developers working on My TV</p><p> - the fact that we dont got enough serious/dedicated and motivated testers</p><p></p><p>Environment:</p><p> - the vast amount of different tv capture cards </p><p> - the hardware differences between every PC</p><p> - the audio/video codecs people use</p><p></p><p>3th parties:</p><p> - some tv capture cards have very buggy drivers </p><p> - the lack of good documentation on directshow (blame M$ for this)</p><p> - 3th parties not releasing documentation to opensource projects</p><p></p><p>End Users:</p><p> - not reading any documentation </p><p> - using pc's which dont follow the system requirements for MP</p><p> - wrong setup/configuration of MP</p><p> - using latest CVS versions and expect it to be bugfree</p><p> - using non-supported tv cards</p><p></p><p></p><p>Now what have we done to improve this:</p><p></p><p>1. we introduced the pre-releases and final release</p><p>The +/- 2 weeks between a pre-release and final release is used for testing. Its forbidden for developers to add any new code and the entire 2 weeks are used for testing, debugging and fixing bugs. However since we cannot test everything (due to lack of time and available hardware) we have to rely on testers</p><p></p><p>2. Attracting new developers and testers</p><p>We tried in every way to get good testers and good developers.</p><p>However in the end this resulted in nothing. Developers seem not interested which is weird because SageTV/Meedio and others have no problem attracting developers. </p><p></p><p>Some things we did:</p><p>- publishing 'how-2-write plugins for MP' tutorial'</p><p>- made the sources available as file release on sourceforge</p><p>- post on our website and forums to attract new devs</p><p>- setup a wiki for testers</p><p></p><p>We did attract a lot of new testers. However none of them where serious</p><p>They simply did not test, didnt write test plans etc etc</p><p></p><p>- Making MP less dependent on 3rth party code</p><p>Part of the problem is that MP now uses codecs, filters etc written by 3th parties like microsoft, intervideo,... We're currently in the process of writing our own codecs/filters. This means we will have full control and can fix bugs because we wrote the software ourselves. </p><p>At the moment when there's a bug in a microsoft filter we cannot fix them. Even worse, microsoft is fixing those bugs, but is only making them available for microsoft media center edition and not for windows xp users</p><p></p><p>- Assigning plugins to developers</p><p>In the past every developer could do what he pretty much wanted.</p><p>We changed this recently and now a developer is responsible for 1-2 plugins. This means that this person will be the only dev working on the</p><p>plugin which hopefully increases stability.</p><p></p><p>As you can see we are making steps to improve stability of mediaportal</p><p>I know we're not there yet, and requesting a stable version is just too early in my opinion. On the other hand I believe we could greatly speed up the development process of mediaportal and thus have a stable version if we could find more good testers and developers which </p><p>are willing,dedicated and motivated</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Frodo</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Frodo, post: 19527, member: 10277"] Here is my opinon: 1. Mediaportal is still in beta phase. I don't see how anybody can expect beta software to be fully stable 2. You guys are requesting a stable version, but at the same time i see >1000 feature requests in the forums. This conflicts and it is not possible to please everybody. We cannot stop adding new features to make MP stable because users demand new features 3. i think 80% of all problems are related with the My TV plugin. All the other modules are pretty stable 4. Reason TV causes all the problems is because : MediapPortal Team: - bugs (offcourse) - the fact we're volunteers and dont have 40hrs/week to work on My TV - the fact that there are just 2 developers working on My TV - the fact that we dont got enough serious/dedicated and motivated testers Environment: - the vast amount of different tv capture cards - the hardware differences between every PC - the audio/video codecs people use 3th parties: - some tv capture cards have very buggy drivers - the lack of good documentation on directshow (blame M$ for this) - 3th parties not releasing documentation to opensource projects End Users: - not reading any documentation - using pc's which dont follow the system requirements for MP - wrong setup/configuration of MP - using latest CVS versions and expect it to be bugfree - using non-supported tv cards Now what have we done to improve this: 1. we introduced the pre-releases and final release The +/- 2 weeks between a pre-release and final release is used for testing. Its forbidden for developers to add any new code and the entire 2 weeks are used for testing, debugging and fixing bugs. However since we cannot test everything (due to lack of time and available hardware) we have to rely on testers 2. Attracting new developers and testers We tried in every way to get good testers and good developers. However in the end this resulted in nothing. Developers seem not interested which is weird because SageTV/Meedio and others have no problem attracting developers. Some things we did: - publishing 'how-2-write plugins for MP' tutorial' - made the sources available as file release on sourceforge - post on our website and forums to attract new devs - setup a wiki for testers We did attract a lot of new testers. However none of them where serious They simply did not test, didnt write test plans etc etc - Making MP less dependent on 3rth party code Part of the problem is that MP now uses codecs, filters etc written by 3th parties like microsoft, intervideo,... We're currently in the process of writing our own codecs/filters. This means we will have full control and can fix bugs because we wrote the software ourselves. At the moment when there's a bug in a microsoft filter we cannot fix them. Even worse, microsoft is fixing those bugs, but is only making them available for microsoft media center edition and not for windows xp users - Assigning plugins to developers In the past every developer could do what he pretty much wanted. We changed this recently and now a developer is responsible for 1-2 plugins. This means that this person will be the only dev working on the plugin which hopefully increases stability. As you can see we are making steps to improve stability of mediaportal I know we're not there yet, and requesting a stable version is just too early in my opinion. On the other hand I believe we could greatly speed up the development process of mediaportal and thus have a stable version if we could find more good testers and developers which are willing,dedicated and motivated Frodo [/QUOTE]
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