What The Hell Are We To Do About TV? (3 Viewers)

[frippe75]

I have given up at least 20 times on media portal... Some months passes and i'm back only to get disapointed (on tv implementation) after spending yet another 20 hours of my time..

I'f i'd only stayed at work instead and used the money to buy a new car instead... !!

Im using media portal 0.2.3.0 stable and have XP SP2 with all to my knowledge rec hotfixes. tuner is fire-dtv (Terr) with latest firmware. Drivers are the latest.

Watching TV for a couple of hours is a given one to cause a hard-button-reset.

Anybody really experiencing stable tv (1 week period)

 

[Spragleknas]

Yes. As stated above: All is well - until I just have to try some PQ tweak (TVE2)
With TVE3 I am sometimes (read: some SVN's) happy - other times (SVN's) not... Giving it a try again soon (probably because everything has been running stable for far to long...)

 

[luksmann]

TVE3 works flawless ATM - at least for me (using the latest SVN). TVE3 is still in beta stage and given the thousands of possibel hardware/software combinations out there, I think it's doing quite well. Yes there may be some problems and/or bugs but that's where the Open-Source part of MP comes in handy - one can always influence development in many ways (Feedback, Donation, ...)

note: seems that I have also been infected by this strange disease - maybe it spreads over the forum or the SVNs?

 

[guytpetj]

TVE2 and TVE3 work flawless for me. I have a whole selection of TV Tuners in my HTPC's (analog, digital), and I think both TVE2 and TVE3 are doing very well. I know it is an almost impossible task for the Devs to cater for each possible hardware/software/tv tuner combination, but thet are doing a damn good job.

Many times when I have a niggly problem, it is caused by other software, or should I say caused by me since I was so stupid to load and try a program of a DVD that came free with a computer magazine.

I'm at a stage now that I can load and configure MP from scratch within 20 minutes (on my most complicated system), and even faster on my basic systems.

Many people get frustrated when things don't work right, but this frustration is causing them not to see what is wrong.

All I can say is that for me MP is rock stable and the very best HTPC software around.

 

[psiebe]

I have to agree that the TV part is the weakest part op MP at the moment. Been happy with TVE3 for several months, until it stopped working all of a sudden. only way to fix it appeared to be going back to the build in 'old' plugin.
In addition, the mapping of channels and getting the program guide to function properly is something that would require fixing, although it works with the existing workarounds. Compare this to the (XP)MCE functionality that handles this much better.
MP's flexibility and plugins still make it a winner, but it is far from perfect.

 

[ziphnor]

It is interesting to hear about all those alternatives to MediaPortal in regards to TV functionality, as well as the complaints about MP's TV functionality

It is probably true that if you live in the US and want to watch digital TV, then maybe there are other programs out there that will work better currently, but i wouldn't know since i live in Europe. Maybe we need some more US developers? (i really wouldn't know, i don't have a complete overview of our team, which reminds me: please note that this post is not in any way on behalf of the MP developers but rather just my personal remarks).

However, if you live in Europe and want to watch scrambled digital (DVB) broadcasts (for which you have a valid subscription of course) , then i personally have not been able to find anything to drag me away from MP. Before i became a developer for Mediaportal (and actually also after) i have tried a host of different programs trying to find the perfect HTPC program. In the end i came to the conclusion that while MP was not the perfect HTPC program for me, it was the closest i could get, and even more importantly i could actively assist in improving it in the areas i felt were lacking (for example i spend alot of time implementing an autocropper and working on DVB teletext subtitles ).

As to alternatives, i tried DVB Viewer for a while (its actually the non-MP HTPC program i tried for the longest time) but it turned out to be even more unstable than MP's TV module. While it supports DVB and teletext subtitles it doesnt get the timing anywhere near correct. Also, while i normally dont really care whether or not programs are user friendly, DVB Viewer's interface seems to get in the way alot (IMHO).

Windows MCE only (officially) supports unscrambled DVB-T broadcasts i believe. No type of subtitles are supported. Microsoft have themselves admitted that they are not focusing on the European market with MCE for now. With various hacks you can get DVB-S/C support for some cards. Using multiple tuners requires even more hacks. I tried (and i tried hard because it otherwise seemed nice and stable) but i never got it to work correctly. It also annoyed the hell out of me that changing any non-trivial setting involved hacking the registry.

I briefly tried GBPVR only to find that it doesnt support watching scrambled channels (otherwise a nice program).

Showshifter i never managed to get working with my dual Twinhan DVB-C cards.

SageTV i just now tried on my dev machine which just has a dual USB DVB-T tuner. For that simple purpose it worked great and was setup in no time. However on my main HTPC (with DVB-C cards) i was unable to view any channels at all. Finally it doesnt seem to support either DVB or teletext subtitles.

That summary of alternatives aside, there is the discussion about whether or not there is enough focus on the TV part of Mediaportal. Given that Mediaportal relies completely on volunteers there is a limit to how much structure there can be in the development process. Unlike in a real workplace you cant just tell people order people to do what is most needed, you have to allow them to work on what they find interesting (to some extent at least) because otherwise they will just stop contributing. However, quite a few developers and testers are focused almost solely on TV related functionality. What you need to understand is that there is a reason that so few programs offer full-featured TV functionality (digital pay TV etc). The broadcasters for example have a tendency to subtly break standards for broadcasting. This is no problem when you are using their set-top box (which they prefer), but rather a nightmare if you are trying to build a generic HTPC program. Furthermore, TV cards usually have driver problems of their own, codecs are bugged and sometimes even the windows components that relate to digital TV simply doesnt work correctly. Finally there is the fact that the standards themselves require alot of work to understand and implement. It should make you stop and think that Microsoft decided to delay DVB-S/C support, even for them its apparently not something you can just go ahead and do easily.

As for support requests about the TV functionality going unnoticed: We dont have the manpower to answer all support requests, and its hard enough to find time to filter through bug-reports. However, people who have even a little bit of experience can help. Get out there on the forums and in the wiki and provide whatever support and documentation you can. If you encounter a problem and no-one replies, then try the IRC channel and do your best to see if you can find anyone else with similar issues ( multiple users reporting/confirming the same issue will significantly affect how likely it is that a tester or developer takes a close look).

 

[4Fred]

I have been running MP on and off for a few years. Every time I’ve been like “*deep sigh* it would have been so good if it had been stable”, and went back to DVB Viewer that has been the most stable program for me in the past, until now.

A few weeks I got a new main board and things, got Vista Ultimate and installed everything and thought I’d give Vista and MCE a serious try. After not being satisfied with that I looked at MediaPortal TV server and thought I’d give it a try. And to my surprise everything works great – and is stable! and have been for more than two week now, it just works. I use Analogue, DVB-C and DVB-T. I’ve recorded lots of shows and series just to see how and if it works, short stuff for like 30 minutes or hockey games than go on for hours, and watching TV at the same time, or doing multiple recordings and what not.

The only thing not working great for me is the new subtitles, they work most of the time but the program gets very unstable. I use single and mutiseat for testing, never any problems. I only use MP for watching/recording TV, I use XBMC for watching movies.

I’m not going back to any of the software’s I’ve tried over the years, MP is the thing for me : )

I’m on Swedish cable network ComHem for the analogue and DVB-C and Boxer for DVB-T.
I have: hauppauge pvr-150, FireDTV and LiteON DVB-T USB stick all connected to a Asus M2A-VM HDMI main board. Guy’s, this just works : )

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I would say that you are a typical MP user, the advantages out weight the disadvantages.

For anyone who has not used any other program outside MP, please try and then give constructive feedback.

The average user see's the software that is installed with there TVCard, personally never been satisfied with that.

MP is a bit of a revolution, in that it tries to be all things to all people, ok it may fail on this for everyone (not through the lack of trying), but the effort is being made to accomplish this, unlike M$ who just turn around and say it cannot be done.

 

[pmcguire]

Thanks Ziphnor for a great post, you pretty much summed up my feelings too.
Mediaportal has warts but compared to it's competition it really is in it's own league.

 

[upspace]

my point of view:

dvbviewer is rock stable. no issues for days while letting tv on, having my wife and kids using it. it does its job fantastically - just osd, navigation etc. could be improved. but what has priority if it comes to stability vs. ergonomics and nice uis. the best ui does not help you if you don't get the damn thing running stable. and that what mediaportal's tv module is all about - server or built-in - it's is one of the most unstable piece of software i have ever seen. every month or two whe i am coming back to media portal to give it another try i see it gets even worse.

sorry but i left mediaportal since version 2 even does not even focus on tv functionality but everything else. so it will be a long while till we get some decent and stable tv function. meanwhile other software will become better with the osd => check dvbviewer's latest high resolution skins. wow?!

there is no all-in-one solution yet in the market. you have to go with at least two apps and try to integrate them. at the moment i am having vista media center for media library browsing (pictures, dvd, videos, music) and a plugin to start dvbviewer from within media center. pressing stop (to stop audio and video playback in dvbviewer),then green button on my remote always brings me back to media center. using the plugin in media center starts (brings to front) dvbviewer immediately. my wife has no problems with that - it looks all integrated (i think she even does not realize that there are two apps although differnent skins/colours