To all devs: What is your real(!) target? (1 Viewer)

[jcee]

Though I am rarely here, I am really having on eye on mediaportal. It is quickly growing and it recieves features every couple of days.
Also you are working hard to bugfix 0.2 final, I know...

Nevertheless let me allow the question what you real target is?!

To me it is always the question "Should I switch over to TVcentral or should I stay?" The feature of MP are impressve indeed, but they really take lot of time to install and have fun with.

I know that this comes with all this big community and everybody working on it.

But what I am missing is a really rock-stable installation, so that I really rely on the thing I have. Currently it crashes from time to time, it crashes on some files, it freezes from time to time.

OK, I could live with this when I decided to go the "hot way", installing every tweak and every daily build.

But my (and al lot of others wifes) are going to kill us. We should just have a rock solid stable basic install.

(I was even thinking about all these properitary Linux VDR software, maybe I install this as a dual boot)

They have far reduced funcionality, but you can rely on them!

Don't get me wrong, guys, I appreciate that things are ongoing and we are part of a big developer and beta tester community, but when I want to watch a DVD and MP crashes or looks up during the movie with all your friends sitting around on a saturday night.. and you are desperatly looking for DVD-player you start thinking if this is the right way...

I could live with a decent list of specs and guidelines (= not recommendation) if they just would help making thinks more reliable..

I even think of Windows beeing the source of all trouble, maybe moving to Mediaplayer Classis for the time beeing would be on solution.
You seen guys, I really have trust in you, but there are too many frontiers you have to fight..

Its Windows, its everyones setup, its the different codecs..

 

[wortelsoft]

Since about a month MP is rock stable for me. And since a weak the last mayor issue I had is solved. Left are only af few glitches and anoyances, wereby most of them is cosmetic stuf.
Looking at your setup which is quite simular to my setup, I see one component which really made a diiference on stability in my system:

The Cpu

I started MP on duron 800 512MB, 60GB, asus 9550GE, PVR150MCE
After a short I traded some hardware for a duron 1200 and a soundblaster live this made a huge improvement to ussabilty and a little improvement to stabilty.
Because I got fed up with the slow responce in some area's I upgraded my main system. And put the old stuf in my htpc

This is now a Athlon Xp 1800+ @ 2000+, 512MB, 60GB, asus 9550GE, PVR150MCE

Well that thit the trick for me, stabilty impoved tremendously.

At first I was alos reluctant to get my money out again to buy stuff to be able to upgrade my HTPC, but it was money well spend.

See my post as a tip. Maybe I don't use the same features as you, so you never really know if it helps until you try it.

 

[wewe]

MP is NOT rocksolid for me (and never was).

I am still messing with different Codecs in order to find a combination that allows usage of TV and DVD.

- I used NVIDIA but then with a certain CSV everything besides of fullscreen TV got unuseable as the OSD stalls every few seconds for some seconds

- then I used (the former) mpeg2dec, but with an SVN from last week it was renamed to MPV and MPA and now I have stuttering in regular fullscreen TV and especially when recording (I am wondering what else has been changed besides the name?)

- then I changed to Dscaler but from Dscaler I can not start a DVD ... MP hangs completely.

So I am back to playing DVD's with an external player ...

This is my situation since I started to use MP in August 05 ... I had around 20 installations (including variuos complete re-installs) and I never had a stable one. I have a MP-only PC and the components are standard components that I specially bought for the usage with MP.

A lot of stuff (like wheatheroverlay and disk space whatching) has come in the last weeks but I am still missing a stable configuration for TV and DVD (what should be 90% of a MediaPortals usage). I would suggest that EVERYTHING besides the functions around TV should be put on hold before the number of daily error posts in this forum are heavily reduced.

So I can second jcee ... and: No! I don't go away I stay with MediaPortal.

thanks+regards
WeWe

 

[Efros]

I only have one issue which is graphics card related, and it only happens very occasionally. MP is about as rock steady for me as any other piece of windows software. The interface is intuitive and even my grandson can get to his disney films and play them.

 

[infinite.loop]

Nevertheless let me allow the question what you real target is?!

Mission

if you have a look at the changelog, the "real(!) target" is very obvious. to release a rock solid and bugfree MediaPortal 0.2.

If you test demo versions of other HTPC applications you will notice that even commercial products have major issues, bad usability, horrible configuration, lack of features and bad support.

just have a look at their support forums (if present) before you buy it.

 

[jcee]

Dont get me wrong guys.
I know there is a mission and you are all according to that mission.
Also there are lots of ppl saying it is rock stable..

Others who have problems should give their specs and you really focus on resolving the problems.. I do not doubt..

But for its the same (sorry my footer is still wrong), I have FX5200 GFX, Athlon 3000+ on a Gigabyte board with 1Gig of Ram, a PVR150. So nothing really special and nevertheless it crashes quite often.. there was a time where it was more stable, but not the recent months..

I am willing to throw away my hardware and buy new one if this would help. I just do not want to live with the problems and my wife will almost kill me..

I bought a Plasma for 3000 Euros and today it looks a good idea to have a DVD-player next to it.. Just to be sure I am able to watch DVD 100% of the time..

You see what I mean? There are showing up so many plugins, extensions etc.. But I would be really satisfied if I could rely on the TV and DVD function, which I can not currently!

Maybe it is something with my hardware or software, though I reinstalled several times (incl.Windows).. No problem, I would get rid of the hardware them.

 

[mPod]

There are showing up so many plugins, extensions etc..

Don't mix things up. Those are not from the core dev team. We concentrate on bug fixing only and do NOT develop any plugins, extensions or whatever atm. Face the facts and keep the truth, pls. It's just either way the team does it, there are always some people who are not satisfied with the work and can do nothing but complain.

The rest I won't comment. :wink:

 

[gxtracker]

I have FX5200 GFX, Athlon 3000+ on a Gigabyte board with 1Gig of Ram, a PVR150. So nothing really special and nevertheless it crashes quite often.. there was a time where it was more stable, but not the recent months..

Is your system prime and memtest'ed past 24 hours? Are all your drivers WHQL Certified? Since you're running an Athlon My guess is you're using an nForce board - which when installing the drivers will install things like the nForce IDE driver which is NOT WHQL Certified...

The point is: if you want a rock stable HTPC, it has to be built differently than a generic computer you would use for work/gaming. Stability should be the #1 focus before you even install MediaPortal.

Of course, Im not denying there are bugs in MP. My system also suffers from crashes from time to time - but as long as you keep using a 0.2.0.0 alpha program, you are going to have to accept that fact for a little while longer.

Right now the development team is focusing on ironing out bugs and getting the program stable. When that's done, I can guarantee you that there is an eager design team waiting to not only work on new developments, but to also refine currently existing ones.

 

[wewe]

mpod: if you look what has been part of the standard installation of 0.2 RC1 and 0.2 RC4 then there is a large difference. Just go the plugins settings.

Maybe the core dev's take only care for the core MP. But a lot of other stuff that influences MP and it's stability has the found the way to the standard delivery. Everybody installs it without any choice and then has to take care that it works.

thanks+regards
WeWe