Things Media Portal needs to be frikkin awesome! (1 Viewer)

[Jack_Ruby]

Ok, so I've been using MP for close to a month, and I like it. However, I decided that the unexamined DVR is not worth living, so I checked out everything else I could find:
Yahoo go for tv
Gb-pvr
& Got all media.

In the past I've also used a directivo and myth-tv.

I'm not a complete computer-noob, but I consider myself a dvr "lead user", I do however, have better things to do with my life than endlessly tweak dvr software.
Oh, I'm also a human factors specialist who does lots of usability work.

So, with that introduction out of the way, here are some things I think MP could do to be frikkin awesome:

1.better visibility and readability. It looks like MP devs did all the work on their laptop screens 12" in front of their faces. It doesn't seem to be set up for people viewing on 27" tvs 9' away. Which is a pretty typical tv setup for most living rooms. Yes, I have bumped up the font size, which helped, but can you expect the average person to do that? Also, bumping up the font size can mean that the formatting is off, so words don't line up correctly.

2.better radio: add recording. I like radio, but it would be great to record it when I'm not at home. Adding record radio would be a great function. just add a manual record start/stop time.

3.better gude interface ala tivo. I don't know about other systems, but directtivo has a great on-screen guide. It's dark and translucent, yet easy to read. The best part is that the left shows a column of 'whats on now' for a bunch of channels, and the right shows 'whats coming up' for the selected channel.

4.better setup: setup is too detailed for a noob. I don't know what else to say... I had to muddle through it a bit. I did get it, though. It would be nice if there was an automated 'newbie setup' option. Then a user could go back and fine tune.

5.when paused ffd = frame by frame. I miss that feature, but it's not a deal breaker, ditto for the next one

6. when ffding then pressing play, the player jumps back a few seconds. a great feature to have. keeps you from missing that dramatic moment when the show returns from commercial.which you wouldn't need if...

7. MP had better built in commercial skipping. I know there's dvr-ms toolbox, but that has so many bugs, I almost called terminix I know, a bad joke

8.better autodelete queue. Maybe this is just me, but I like not having recordings in 'folders' within MP. that way I can see what was recorded when. It would also be great to have an autodelete based on oldest goes first.

9.better video quality. Gbpvr looks better this may have to do with the next one

10.format. Recordings stored in native mpeg 2 not whatever the hell dvr.ms is

11. better net radio. I can't figure that crap out. Go for TV has nice built in net radio and net video, which is nice.

12. something other than zap2itlabs epg, because that will start costing real money soon. Yahoo's EPG looks good


That's it. Please let me know if there is some way to accomplish the above, and it's just something I missed.
I really like MP, and it's the best DVR software I've tried outside of tivo. It's usability and usefulness are way beyond GB PVR, GAM, and GFTV.
I can tell real thought has gone into MPs development, and I would just like to encourage the devs to keep at it. Nothing is perfect, but MP is getting there.
Its so close that my cheapskate (ok, broke) ass is going to do some donating unless I find something better (unlikely).

So, keep up the good work, make a few changes, and most importantly


BTW, in case anyone cares I'm using a p4 2ghz, with 2 hdd c:80gig (os and progs) and d:120gig (recordings), and a hauppauge pvr 350, with an NVidia gforce card for output.

 

[Nightmare77]

Ill have a crack at some of these, and leave the rest
4.better setup: setup is too detailed for a noob. I don't know what else to say... I had to muddle through it a bit. I did get it, though. It would be nice if there was an automated 'newbie setup' option. Then a user could go back and fine tune.

I personally like the setup, its a little confusing to start with but its the sort of thing that once you get use to it you can ticker and change just about anything, feels hell of a lot more customisable than say other products like MCE.

9.better video quality. Gbpvr looks better this may have to do with the next one
This might be directly related to codecs being used , perhaps there was 2 different codecs being used between the 2 applications?

10.format. Recordings stored in native mpeg 2 not whatever the hell dvr.ms is
This has been changed with the new tv engine, so basically its already fixed but its still in the beta stages, so you can select mpeg as the recording format instead.

Just out of interest what version are you running, i know a lot of newer skins and so forth have transparent OSD for tv guide and the like .

With regard to the text size i can't really comment as i dont' have my new tv yet , bit with regard to the 27" screen it may come down to what resolution you are running it at , is it a TV or an actual monitor . Perhaps the resolution is set very high and makes things really small in MP?

 

[Jack_Ruby]

Thanks for the reply
I'm using 0.2.3.0 RC1
I don't know much about tvengine, how is it different than MP?

I'm using 640 x 480 resolution

yeah, having all those setup options is good, I'm just suggesting that n00bs might have a tough time. I could definitely see all those options scaring someone away for the easy setup of yahoo gftv. However, power users want options. That's why I suggest a 'quick start up' setup option.

dunno about codecs I've got ffdshow, which should be the codec for everything. I tried using the NR but it eats my processor.
It's weird, I thought the picture noise was just from analog signal noise, but GB-PVR looked much clearer. I can only suppose that the difference is transcoding. :shrug:

Speaking of transcoding, the xvid converter in MP doesn't work. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[THDBASED]

7. There is a good commercial skipper out there that works fine with MP, just google "comskip" and also take a look at the WIKI...

 

[Bagal]

Here's my take on a few of those:
1. I'm using MP on an 28" CRT with the BlueTwo skin, personally I don't have a problem with the readability, but obviously problems like this come down to user preferences, what some like others don't. My suggestion would be to try out different skins and find something that suits you better. There are some awesome skins out there.

3. Not sure about functionality wise, but certainly readability may be addressed by trying out different skins as in 1.

4. I'd agree with that, I love the setup of MP for allowing me to tweak everything, but a new user should be shown a wizard interface, preferably within MP itself ala Windows Media Center.

5. Have you tried playing with the skip steps in the setup? I'm not 100%, but you may be able to configure it to frame by frame on the first press of ffd, not quite what you're after but close.

6. You just need to exercise that trigger finger a bit more to get the accuracy! Nice idea though.

10. dvr-ms is mpeg2, all microsoft have done is add a meta-data layer which gives info about what was recorded, tools like dvrms-toolbox can strip this off and leave you with the native mpeg. The new TV engine can record in mpeg directly, so if you don't want to have the extra step, I'd suggest trying this out, but be aware that it is still in beta and hence you may experience the occasional bug.
I use a combination of dvrms toolbox and a tool called crunchie which runs on a nightly schedule to convert my recordings to xvid, which also helps save on space.

 

[mrkrad]

for ex-XBMC users, it should strive to reach that level of PNP and flow of use.

 

[and-81]

XBMC doesn't have TV, so we're on our own in that area, but we should definitely try to use XBMC as a reference in other areas...

When in doubt, just ask yourself: "What would XBMC do?"