[Blog] What Sayeth You?: MP-TVSeries (1 Viewer)

[Lyfesaver74]

*********Note From Author*********​

First off, want to say for not putting someone on the couch this past Monday. The original guest could not get around to it, and I had planned to put myself on the couch, but to be honest I was not ready to spill my secrets yet. ZealotSix will be on couch this Monday so be looking for that soon!

I would like to take moment and explain our "What Sayeth You?" blog. The concept and rules are very simple. A skin, plugin or base MP feature will be detailed in the blog, and the community throws in their "two cents". At the bottom of the blog is a section for you to place your comments and we ask that you follow a very simple pattern. We do not believe in tearing something down, without building it up first so please follow the formula of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Please use this formula to let us know what you like (the good), how it could function better (the bad) and how it might look better (the ugly). At the end of the blog I will place my comments as an example.

Some of you are saying "That is what the forum threads are for!" or "If they want more they need to raise an issue!". These statements, albeit true, can be a turn off. Not everyone wants to post in a thread with 50 pages of posts and not everyone understand how raising an issue works. Here we are offering and easy solution for you to say what you want without jumping through hoops. I would like to point out that this blog is a courtesy and if you are serious about your issues, you should raise them in the proper place and not wait for the feature, plugin or skin to be in the "What Sayeth You?" blog.

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What Sayeth You?: MP-TVSeries​

#1 (11/11)​

 

[Lyfesaver74]

The Good - MP-TVS offers me a 99% flawless experience with organizing and displaying my TV shows. I really like how, with recent updates, I am now allowed to add my sports. I now have a very professional arrangement of all my football, baseball, basketball and even Olympic games!!!

The Bad - I would like it if MP-TVS would take initiative to change to the next season and episode automatically. See issue #603. I would also like it if it handled multiple episode ISOs. See issue #133. I know there are some major showstoppers keeping 133 from reality, but hey... I want what I want =)

The Ugly - Most of how a plugin looks is due to the skin, but I think MP-TVS would be better if the genre view allowed for other views than "List" some nice banners or posters for each genre theTVDB allows would be good.

 

[gshipley]

The good: Fantastic plugin that I use on a daily basis. Auto matching works almost 100% of the time.

The bad: Sometimes the scanner fails to run without me forcing a scan

The ugly: The config UI. Seriously, its functional but complicated as hell and pretty ugly to boot. I hate to complain because it does it's job well but ---

 

[ZealotSix]

MP-TVSeries is a top notch plugin. Very feature rich.

The Good: Play a random episode. I use this all the time for sitcoms

The Bad: Probably user error, but somehow I managed to get some Samurai Jack episodes to import as if they are their own series, not listed under the Samurai Jack series. Probably my fault though, and I just haven't taken the time to investigate it yet.

The Ugly: Gotta agree with gship, the config is a bit confusing. Thankfully, I rarely have to go there

 

[emphatic]

The Good: It works like magic. I wish there was a similar plugin for Music.

The Bad: There is no (not yet) similar plugin for Music. I'd like to have ClearArt download/selection available from the context menu, right under FanArt. Perhaps an "basic/advanced settings" button in configuration and keep some stuff hidden from new users?

The Ugly: Luckily, it's hard to put my finger on something. See the post above about configuration, perhaps it's somewhat cluttered?

Emph

 

[RoChess]

The Good - It is such an ideal plugin, that it should almost be included with MediaPortal by default. Thankfully the MPEI package makes it very easy and there is support for it in any skin that takes itself serious. The WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is also extremly high with this. I'm still unable to teach my better half how to use the SMS-filtering in MovingPictures, but she has no problems managing custom playlists with this gem.

The Bad - The config might be confusing to some, but considering how many possible options exists, it would be very difficult to try to do it another way. That being said, the developers are constantly trying new ways to make it even easier, with the new import wizard being a good example on that. The old method of importing already worked well, but the wizard has made it even easier. The open issues that I personally care for right now are #614 (playlist double-episode bug), #585 (auto clear playlist), and #595 (prevent watching out of order). Do not forget to 'star' issues if you care for these, or others, as well. Developers tend to first fix the ones with the most amount of stars.

The Ugly - It lacks full AI (Artificial Intelligence), so I still have to manually add string replacements once in a while to correct certain shows. I mean why can't it just scan the video itself, recognize the actors and know I'm adding "Battlestar Gallactica (2003)" and not the original series when I forget to add the year to the filename, I just don't get it

 

[mpsam]

The Good: It works beautifully. Even my three year finds it easy to use.

The Bad: Having to go to config on my HTPC in order to add a new series to a category (other family members don't like that either). Wish it could been done remotely from another computer. To elaborate, in Moving pictures I have a category set to a certain folder (full path contains). Add a new movie to that folder and it appears in that category auto-magically.

The Ugly: Still trying to think of one but if I could, I suspect that there is already a solution in the forum somewhere that I have not read.

 

[resa]

AW: What Sayeth You?: MP-TVSeries

The good: Works fine, clearly overview of Series, ability to add and complete data/artwork via thetvdb.com for unpopular Series (and indeed, simultaneously share it with the community - beside the advantage that you can import it on every fresh MePo installation again instead input data/copying the files manually)

The bad: Only one, but an massive overloaded enormous big one: WHY THE HELL i have to press always some buttons to watch the next episode? Is it seriously that big deal to implement an continous play like the music plugin already have? Please Please Please make finally some "THIS IS SPARTA" to bring that hardly missed feature on (and BTW building an playlist in front of watching is no comfortable solution)

The Ugly: As already said, all depends on the skin, so there is no ugly for me. In opponent to other opinions i also agree with the look and feel of the Settings, i think that is okay the way it was realized now, there can be some improvements only in usability (e.g. reassign files from another path or exchange sd-avi's with hd-mkv's without have to rescan and import the whole data from thetvdb.com), but this is no real issue, because the settings are not used that often.

For me TV-Series is one of the finest Plugins. Cheers for your work!

And additionally my wish for the next "What Sayeth you": Moving Pictures (have to say something bout that )

regards
resa

 

[DieBagger]

Hands-down one of the best plugins for MP and one of the reason I started using MediaPortal!!!

The good: Browsing your TV shows never looked better. A broad range of possible views and artwork results in spectecular looking views from various skins.

The bad: The listview browsing often stutters a bit and isn't as "smooth" as I would like it to be, but to be fair this is as much a MediaPortal problem as it is MP-TvSeries.

The "ugly" The configuration tool has become a bit dated and cluttered. The new importer is fantastic for matching series but a bit clumsy for matching local files to online episodes if they couldn't be matched automatically.

Big to the MP-TvSeries developers (past and current) for delivering this awesome plugin...

 

[fforde]

The Good: There are dozens of things I love about MPTV-Series, too many to really list here. Really what makes it great is not any one thing but just the whole package. It makes it easy and enjoyable to browse your movie collection. The UI is fairly strait forward and focuses on the content. MPTV-Series is the top rated MediaPortal plug-in for a reason.

The Bad: I was hesitant to even post here because MPTV-Series is such a great plugin and it doesn't feel right making a post dedicated to trivial short comings. If my hand were forced though, I would have to say the number one annoyance for me is the lack of flexibility of the browsing system. For example sometimes I would like to see a list of 30 minute comedy shows with at least one unwatched episode. As far as I know this is not possible right now. I know that is an extremely specific example, but that is sort of my point, everyone at times wants to browse their content in a different way. For me the half hour comedy is the perfect accompaniment for a quick lunch. Maybe someone else just wants to watch a random documentary type show with a glass of wine after a stressful day? Or heck, what if the wife just wants to watch one of her favorite shows (which she has made a custom category for) but wants to filter by stuff that has unwatched episodes? MP-TVSeries is a great plug-in, but if I had to pick one enhancement that I think would make it even better, it would be more customizable navigation.

The Ugly: I don't really feel like it's fair to comment on the looks of the plug-in since this is so dependent on the skin. I guess like others have mentioned, the config is a bit messy but last I heard the MP-TVSeries team is working hard on some in GUI config screens that I am sure will look great. Actually I think the great look of the plug-in in so many skins has actually caused a (tiny) problem. The slide out menu in most skins is fantastic, it focuses on actions I care about the most. But because this menu provided by the skin is often so nice, the context menu (F9) in the plugin itself has gotten a bit neglected. Things are a bit jumbled there and could probably be grouped a bit better.

All of that said, I really love this plugin and I use it on a daily basis. Huge thanks to everyone that bust's their ass to maintain MPTV-Series.