Switching from BTV to Media Portal... (1 Viewer)

[sagz]

What am I in store for?

I currently have 2 htpc's and one server (hdhomerun and a hybrid card)

Everything is recorded on the server and is then watched on the htpc's

BTV works fine but I'm really frustrated at all the promises they made early on and now dropping all that to focus on the enterprise market.

Also I'd love just one app to access my blu-ray, tv, videos, music, and pictures.



Sagz

Also... i am running XP Pro atm... I have the means to use Windows 7. Does this work well with 7?

 

[Gunn]

Good luck, I'm thinking of joining you. I've been using BeyondTV for many years, but the updates seem to be few and far between these days. I have a main HTPC and a BeyondTV-Link HTPC also in another room.
I've been using Media Portal, but just as a replacement for Beyond Media. Don't use the TV component.
Post back if you get it all working.

 

[etheesdad]

Mp has good support for multi seat, so quite possible to run server on back end machine and use the two front ends to access/control it. If you want advanced recording capabilities, check out "for the Record" plugin.

As far as Blu-Rays go, there is plugin support for Arcsoft and Pdvd, and the way they work is to use the respective applications as external players. For music, pictures, and other videos, the front end does each of those.

The current Beta has improved W7 support.

 

[sagz]

Thanks for the info. I got the tvserver setup and running and was able to watch tv on one of my htpcs. Now I am struggling with guide data. I've searched for the error that I'm recieving but haven't tried the suggestions yet. But so far I love how fast the GUI is. I'll report back my success or failure

Well no matter what I do I still get this error when setting up the guide portion of the install.

This is a fresh install of media portal

after install I add the plugin for schedules direct (yes I have an account) and then configure it.

as soon as I click to anything off of that it give me this error

any ideas?



I got it to work by downloading the SVN version of SD

as described here.

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...-october-2009-a-26951/index40.html#post395212

still testing

 

[dobyken]

I made the switch from BTV w/HDHomerun a few months ago and don't regret it. BTV is great software if all you want to to is record and watch TV. The failure to integrate Beyond Media required that a user run multiple applications while MediaPortal gives you everything in one package. I'm not real big on recorded TV due to the size of the files and the time it takes to reencode video and remove commercials so I'd rather just download a 720p torrent and put it in My TV Series. I do, however, use TV for semi-live viewing so that I can pause and skip commercials. I have Netflix and Hulu integrated into MP so with that and Moving Pictures for my ripped DVD's I'm rolling in content. The only thing that didn't work right out of the box was the US guide data using the SchedulesDirect plugin but after a couple of hours of playing that was working too. There's an eMail plugin so you can read messages and I was able to get an old EBay plugiin working in 1.1Beta so I rarely have to take down Media Portal to run something else...too bad we don't have a MediaPortal forum plugin.

 

[dvbkiwi]

I made the switch from BTV to MP just over a month ago, at first I was overwhelmed by all the options I had to manualy configure and set to get it to work. My reason for changing was DVB support and to get the EPG via my Satellite.

Going to MP was not easy but was definitely a good move (My wife still doesn't agree). the only thing the BTV had that I miss is show squeeze. On the positive side I now have Satellite EPG, DBV-S and many other nice features. My firefly remote works nicely with the custom profile that I have set up and the TV server works really well.

there may even be an addon that does the same as showsqueeze, I just haven't had time to look.

 

[sagz]

Good amount of input here thanks! I am still struggling with guide data but so far I love it. The real test will be how it records