Various issues (1 Viewer)

[Azhrei]

Hi there,

Recently we decided to get a media pc for our new apartment. I'd built one myself a year ago and had no problems with it, however to save time we went ahead and bought a cheap Acer Aspire M1610 desktop instead of actually building a pc. However, we've had no end of trouble with it so far. The issues that are of interest here, however, are as follows -

We installed Vista Home Premium with all the updates, including SP1. We installed it on a 120GB drive while putting all of our media, divided into three folders (Movies, TV Shows, Music) on a seperate 1TB SATA2 drive. Like I did with the previous media pc, and like I always do with my desktop and laptop, I installed the latest Klite codec pack. Videos were playing alright but on zoom mode 3 on Vista's Media Center, videos kept jumping. I went on the 'net and people suggested the codecs were at fault. Uninstalled Klite, installed a different pack. Same issue. Installed the Radeon HD3450 that had just arrived in the mail with the latest Catalyst driver set, installed yet another recommended codec pack. Videos jump in zoom mode 1 now, while they're fine on zoom mode 3. The hell?

Anyway, we decided to give it up as a quirk of Vista's MCE (and bad luck on our part) and looked for alternatives. Tried a Kubuntu media centre distribution - it took over an hour to install, was ugly as hell and wouldn't accept the 3450. Back to Windows. Looked for alternative Windows-based MCE's and found MediaPortal. Installed it. Videos play fine. Won't accept the remote. The hell? The remote that came with the pc is an Acer media remote that looks
almost exactly like - and is recognised by Windows as - the Microsoft MCE Remote. Tried all kinds of configurations in options but nothing will work - from the Windows MCE Remote option to the general IR remote option. We did get it partially working with the Windows Remote option after a bit of fiddling but the up, down, left and right buttons wouldn't work. There's nothing wrong with the remote as Vista's MCE has no problem with it and it works fine even in Vista itself, navigating folders. All we see is a hugely confusing list of bindings that are in no way user-friendly or obvious to configure. So that's our first problem with MediaPortal, if anyone has any suggestions.

Our second problem is the way MediaPortal recognises our media folders. As stated, we've split our media into three different folders - Movies, TV Shows and Music. For some inexplicable, unbelievably stupid reason, MediaPortal will only allow one folder to be viewed for "videos" in general. Why do we have to put the TV Shows folder into the Movies folder before we can watch them (pre-recorded shows going way back). I mean, why is there a restriction to one folder at all? Why, for the love of God?

Third problem is that while MediaPortal has several options for viewing movie folders, not all of them work. I'd like to select Album or Film Strip, but neither of those will work. The best I've got to work to our taste is the Big Icons option.

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm ranting and unappreciative of any help before you give it, but this pc is driving me crazy. Problem after problem crop up on it. The PCI wi-fi card keeps dropping the signal before ignoring it altogether and refusing to see any wireless networks at all, while the Wii sitting next to it can see it and several more with no problems. Laptops with wireless connections have no problem while in the same room neither, and even my DS has no problems, ffs. The HDMI audio device onboard the HD3450 refuses to show itself - it came up twice in the device list and worked once, but with both resets, it disappeared again. It still hasn't shown up, so in order to use the HDMI port on the tv and have sound we had to buy speakers. I've been building computers for years now and the last media pc I put together myself had absolutely zero problems, so you can imagine how angry I'm becoming with this one.

If anyone can help me in any way, I'd appreciate it. Also, if there's a list of plugins I should really download, please let me know about it.

MediaPortal Version: Latest
MediaPortal Skin: Blue 3
Windows Version: Vista Home Premium SP1
CPU Type: Pentium Dual-Core 1.8GHz
HDD: 120GB PATA, 1TB SATA2
Memory: 2GB PC6400 DDR2
Video Card: ATi Radeon HD3450
Video Card Driver: Catalyst 8.10
Sound Card: Realtek HD Audio
Remote: Acer media remote
TV: Mirai 32" HDTV
TV - HTPC Connection: DVI-HDMI

 

[geov]

Hi and welcome.....

Issue-1 Remote
Try the IR-Server plugin, it also allows you IR-Blasters if you have any...sorry I dont have the remote that you are using (I use the real MCE-Remote) so I cant give you more help.

Issue-2 Media Folders
You have to build your Music and Movie database first in the MP-Config application, the folder-views are for browsing only and is limmited in functionality.

Issue-3 Viewing Folders
The same as Issue-2 apply here, you first have to build your Music and Movie database before you can use the different views.

 

[revs]

Just echoing above - MediaPortal has multiple "Views". One of which is a "Folder" view, but the others are Database views - these are the ones you want. They let you see all your films etc in one view, arrange by various attributes etc.

For TV - take a look at MyTVSeries.

 

[Azhrei]

Thanks for your replies and suggestions!

1. I've downloaded and installed the iR Server plugin. After a bewildering array of options, I let it detect the remote itself. It detected it as the Microsoft MCE Remote. Went into MediaPortal - yup, still no up, down, left or right.

2. I've added the Movies and TV Shows folders to the database. The program hung for a second, then came back. No change whatsoever in MediaPortal itself.

 

[Tallone]

Plugins!

My TVSeries is the best option if you've lots of TV shows. Get it here. There is no Blue3 skin support in the download. If you have a look around the forum you'll find some Blue3 skin files though.

If Config only hung for a few seconds something went wrong (but you knew that!). It usually takes a while to add films to the database due to the IMDB lookups and whatnot. Make sure that you've added at least one grabber on the Settings tab of the Movie Database screen before updating the database. This caught me out first time round...

Failing that its really worth checking out the Moving Pictures plugin for films- again no Blue3 skin support out of the box, but you'll find the skin files in the forum.

 

[Azhrei]

I've changed skins several times now, including that X-Face and Spinsafe, no change. All the tv shows are pre-recorded and there is no tv card in the computer - why would I need tv plugins? Also, it seems everyone here is speaking in a language I have no idea about, even though I consider myself to be very much computer literate. Blasters? Grabbers?

The pc is not hooked up to the Internet (because of the wi-fi card I mentioned) so I do not want MediaPortal to look up anything or download anything. I already have .jpg's of movie posters included in every folder because of Vista's Media Center, I don't want MediaPortal to look up who was in what or give me any information at all... I just want it to give me two seperate folders for Movies and TV Shows, and to get the remote working. Apparently I need a dozen plug-ins and a degree in MediaPortal language to do this

 

[Tallone]

I somehow missed the no internet bit in your initial post...

In that case all you need to do is add your TV shows folder as one folder in the config and then add your movies folder as a separate one. Make sure you've not got a tick next to any folder (as MediaPortal will default to this and you'll have to navigate away).

The My TVSeries plugin is unrelated to TV-cards. It is just easy way to manage tv shows on your mediacentre.

 

[Azhrei]

Thanks Tallone, I'll have a go at that later.

Regarding the remote, it's an Acer RC6 as found here - eBay.ie: ACER RC6 MEDIA CENTRE REMOTE (item 260293809262 end time 29-Oct-08 20:23:08 GMT)

It is recognised by Windows and MediaPortal as the Microsoft MCE Remote. I cannot figure out why the up, down, left and right buttons will not work in MediaPortal when they will with everything else! Even the Kubuntu distribution I tried recognised it and had no problems with it!

 

[rsbrux]

FWIW, I have a remote that looks identical, except for the ACER logo, which I got with my Scaleo E.
It works fine for me in MP, including cursor keys.
Do the cursor keys work at least for one keypress?
If so, you may want to switch off the debounce feature in the OS.
You didn't make your system info available, but if you are running XP MCE, the attached should help.