Start TV always on same channel (1 Viewer)

[nfox]

I'm sure there used to be a plugin that did this, but I can't remember what it was called, or find it anywhere. Anyway...

I would like to set MP to immediately start fullscreen TV when entering the TV module, but there is a problem with this: there is no guarantee that the last tuned channel is broadcasting, and if it is not there is a long wait for MP to realise this and return control. I would like to be able to specify one particular channel (one that I know broadcasts 24 hours a day) for MP to always tune to first time after starting, or (even better) on re-entering the TV module.

If there is a way of doing this already, please let me know what/how. If there isn't, does anyone fancy having a go at creating one?

Cheers

Neil

 

[Chathers]

Hi Nfox,

I cant answer your question but I will second that its a real pain when you start the TV plugin and it tries to tune into a station which is off the air. It would be a good idea to have a "default start channel" setting.

Another settings that I think would be good for the TV is an auto straight to Live TV on startup/resume option.

Day to day my mediaportal setup is mainly used to watch live TV. My other half does like MediaPortal (she never says that but I can tell everytime see pauses live TV or catches up with iplayer on online videos plugin ) her only complaint is that is too slow to get from startup to watching live TV.

I have played with various codecs and always seems to be a catch 22 situtaion between a fast starting codec and poor picture and slow starting codec and stable quality picture. Currently I am using FFDShow codec for everything and must say that the picture quality and stability is excellent on my Front end setup (Zotac Atom 330 + 2GB + 64GB SSD) but the live TV startup time is long; about 20-30 seconds.

Chris

 

[mm1352000]

...but the live TV startup time is long; about 20-30 seconds.

That seems a little long. Are you including OS boot up and MP start up time in that?

 

[Chathers]

No - thats the time from starting the TV plugin. The picture starts in about 5-10secs the the sound in another 5secs, then the picture freezes for about 10secs, then its all plain sailing!

As I said other codecs such as the MPC start a lot faster however the picture tends to judder/freeze when playing (MS & PowerDVD codec) or quality is poor (MPC codec). Probably because of low power atom 330.

I will be having a good look at it tonight to see if I can get the FFDShow codec to start faster.

Chris

 

[nfox]

After a bit more digging around I think I might be referring to the Autostart plugin, which has broken, been fixed, and then broken again at leat a couple of times over the years, and now seems to have disappeared altogether (although I might just not be looking hard enough). I found a copy in my archive of MP plugins (which obviously needs clearing out a bit), and the associated readme.txt refers to removal of this functionality. So: it's Autostart, it's broken, it's no longer available, and the functionality is no longer included. Never mind.

 

[mm1352000]

Yes, it does seem that Autostart is dead... but have you had a look at MPStartIt?

 

[nfox]

Yes, it does seem that Autostart is dead... but have you had a look at MPStartIt?

Yes, I have. It provides an alternative to Autostart for the automatic starting of plugins such as TV, but not for the automatic starting of TV on a particular channel. At least, not as far as I can tell - if I'm missing something please let me know.

 

[mm1352000]

nfox: I don't use it myself. My search on the forum indicated that other people have migrated to that plugin from Autostart, however I guess your requirements are somewhat more specific. I have a patch for detecting channels that are off air in the scan, but as yet it does not detect that they are off air for timeshifting (which seems to be the issue that bothers you the most). At some point I hope to get around to adding that functionality, but I'm far too busy at the moment I'm afraid...

mm