Successfully upgraded to Windows 8.. some tips. (1 Viewer)

Lotsofjazz

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    .. after problems getting from bad to worse I have reinstalled MP 1.2.3 Stable version..

    With 1.3.0Alpha Live TV wasnt working as it should from the start, with allmost every channel after about an hour watching TV, it stopped working, TV stopped and MP not responding, had to kill MP using the task manager. Some other channels were not watchable at all, with lots of stutter blocking and what not.. I used the 1.3.0 default settings, which were OK for me under windows 7. It seemed working OK in the beginning but the more I use MP, more worse it got..

    In my attempt to solve the problems I have changed something that caused the font size to get very big and ugly.. at that point I had enough and did a complete uninstall (the deepest uninstall available) of MP, and reinstalled MP 1.2.3 Stable version.. This helped to stabelize watching TV, right now I can watch all night without problems.. only some notorius channels still give problems, but not so bad as with 1.3.0 Alpha. BUT the big ugly fonts are still there, and this is independant of the skin I use, the default skin shows big ugly fonts but Black Glass Nova as well.

    Then you might think it is windows related, but with all other applications, the fonts are normal, as expected.

    A little help to get the fonts back to nomal would be appreciated :),

    See attached picture how it is right now:

    bigandugly 2.jpg
     

    kiwijunglist

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    control panel -> appearance & personalisation -> Display -> Font Size 100/125/150% set to 100%
    not sure if this will change within the MP GUI
     

    Lotsofjazz

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    control panel -> appearance & personalisation -> Display -> Font Size 100/125/150% set to 100%
    not sure if this will change within the MP GUI

    Thanks for the support, but this is not causing the problem, no matter how I set the windows appearance, the fonts inside MP remain big and ugly.. But in the Back Glass Nove HD thread I got the tip to clear the cache, which I will try tonight,.. great chance a bad cache is causing the problems.
     

    Lotsofjazz

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    Forgot to feedback on this Big Ugly font issue.. it was indeed because of cached big fonts.. when setting windows appearance to 150% to be able to read the normal windows desktop and other PC things on your TV, causes the fonts inside mepo also get increased with 150%, which in turn are cached and will be reused everytime mepo is started, despite windows is set back to 100%.

    To remedy the big fonts is thus quite easy.. exit Media portal, delete the cache folders of every skin you have, set windows appearence to 100%, restart media portal (tadaaa... everything looks like it should!), let it run for a while to make sure the cache is completely new rebuilt.. exit media portal, set windows appearence back to what you normally use (in my case 150%).. reboot, restart mediaportal, all should still look as when windows was 100%.
     

    Lotsofjazz

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    If you have problems with TV Timeshift stops or Mediaportal crashes when your internet connection is dropped.. you NEED to read this!..

    Ok something completely different..

    I was allmost to the point to get rid of MediaPortal alltogether, because I was heavily frustrated the Mediaportal stopped timeshifting and stopped responding again and again, so I missed quite a few of the very few programs I like to watch..

    First I thought the harddrive was full, causing the timeshiftfile could no longer be stored, but with 100GB free, that could not be the issue. But then I noticed that everytime it happened my WiFi connection was dropped as well.. So I started testing, and indeed, when the wifi USB adapter was removed.. TV would not even start, saying there was no Server connection (asking to put in the IP or server name).. when putting the wifi back in, Mediaportal could start again, and TV was working normally (untill wifi was lost again)..

    So I started searching for this kind of issues on the mediaportal forum, and then I found this post of Paranoid Delusion, which is THE solution!

    It is about the Microsoft Loopback adaptor, to fool the TV server, so the internet connection is bypassed and the TV server keeps working when the Wifi connection is dropped.

    Note: This ONLY works with SINGLE SEAT Mediaportal installations, so server and client are on the same PC and no network connections to other Mediaportal clients..

    MSLoopback is still available for Win 8, but has a new name: "Microsoft KM-TEST-loopbackadapter"

    Please follow my instructions in the link below if you also have this problem of a loosing internet connection causing live TV stop working:

    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...for-singleseat-users.51028/page-8#post-940259

    I hope this helps.
     
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    DragonQ

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    The solution of setting fonts to 100% is useless for newer high DPI laptops, since it makes most other things unreadable from normal viewing distances. What you should do is leave the fonts on 125%/150% (whichever you want) and run MediaPortal in compatibility mode. Right-click on any shortcut for MediaPortal (or the MediaPortal exe itself) and choose Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and tick "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings", and press OK.

    This is not a Windows 8 issue, it's just an issue with newer high DPI screens, most of which happen to come with Windows 8.
     

    Lotsofjazz

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    The solution of setting fonts to 100% is useless for newer high DPI laptops, since it makes most other things unreadable from normal viewing distances. What you should do is leave the fonts on 125%/150% (whichever you want) and run MediaPortal in compatibility mode. Right-click on any shortcut for MediaPortal (or the MediaPortal exe itself) and choose Properties. Then go to the Compatibility tab and tick "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings", and press OK.

    This is not a Windows 8 issue, it's just an issue with newer high DPI screens, most of which happen to come with Windows 8.

    You'r right it is not a win 8 issue really, but since I discovered this problem the first time while using win 8, I thought I it might help pointing it out right here. Because Win 8 only let itself install on HD resolutions, even 720P is too low for win 8, I am probably not the only one.

    But thanks for the tip, it is much easier then finding the cache folder and delting it setting display to 100% run MP and back to 150%.. in the end it has the same effect, it caches the 100% fonts and use that in stead of the 150% fonts.[DOUBLEPOST=1355574380][/DOUBLEPOST]Since I installed the network loopback adapter to fool TV server on my HTPC, MP runs much better!, Live TV on all channels is now much smoother and in sinc with the audio all the time.. I have paused TV for 2 hours a few times , and watched the show after that without any issues, before this was impossible.
     

    Lotsofjazz

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    The update from Win 7 to Win 8 pro, did present more and more problems, also with Mediaportal, at some point the MySQL database was corrupted time and time again, because some hardware driver caused BSOD's all the time..

    At some point I was so fed up with these problems, I decided to do a clean install of windows 8 pro, and this did help tremendously! Now everything works better then ever before!.. I also decided to install Mediaportal 1.2.3 FINAL, iso 1.3.0RC.. MP1.2.3 works beautiful with my system now.. no BETTER, Live TV has never been smoother!

    But the tips in this thread still apply.
    Network Loopback adapter is required
    Install latest Virtual clone drive.. works
    make sure you cache 100% display fonts, and not the 150% display fonts
    Use Lav codecs wherever possible (this is a new tip! Download the latest Lav codecs here: http://1f0.de/downloads/ )
    TVLibrary dll update is still required
     

    gurk

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    Hi, on a brand new system for a HTPC I could use Windows 7 or 8, 64 or. 32bit. Mediaportal is the only intended Applikationen. What OS doch you recommend?
     

    MrCrabs

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    Single seat system? Win7 runs flawless, 8 still has some little issues, but it doesn't effect MP once it's running. Though 8 is faster and gives a better tv signal (at least with my htpc). I am using 32bit, but if you would like to use more than 3gb of RAM (ramdisk or just more performance) then you should go for 64bit.
     

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