Why don't use a good working TV engine like DVBViewer or VDR? (1 Viewer)

[infinite.loop]

I'm using DVB-C. Maybe this is the problem, but I don't think so. A frind of mine (DVB-C too) has switched to VDR, because he couldn't get mediaportal up and running and another person has told me he has a stabel installation (DVB-S) and when I tested it by changing channels, groups go to home screen and back to the "my TV" screen and so on, the mediaportal crashed after about 5 minutes playing around. All people envolved in this scenarios are IT experts, who are used to build ther own PCs.

i am maintaining 18HTPCs at moment (from friends and family).
with different hardware. some also use dvb-c and it works very good.
also have systems with dvb-s +dvb-t + analog cards, no problem at all.

no clue why it is failing for your IT-Experts.
how should i without seeing logfiles or getting specific details about hardware

So right now, I doubt that there is a stable Installation of mediaportal out there since I've seen one or someone swear an oath that he can playing around with the TV engine a longer time without crashing it.

You should have a look @ the support forums, there are only a few threads about such major issues, which are mainly fixed after cleaning the system from old drivers, or installing Microsoft Hotfixes.

I think this is the advantage but also the basic problem in this open source project. There are a lot of new features every day and many developers are working on plugins and other new features, but the basement of this building is rotten and needs rework and no, I don't think that TV server will be the solution to this problem.

I have realy no clue how you get that impression

finally lets say this.
i get the feeling that this seems to turn into a bad flame thread (mediaportal is shit, use VDR).
If that happens, then it will be closed.

If you have issues with MediaPortal, then please visit the support forums and start a thread with all required informations.
We will try to help you.

 

[dickerhund]

I can only say, MP is the best htpc-software I tried so far.

With the TVEngine0.2 I had some issues after a number of channel changes, but the channel change itself was almost instantanious (without timeshift).

With TVEngine0.3 the channel changing is better than 1 sec. (with! timeshift). The other issue is gone, and I can watch TV as if it is an CRT-Tuner for 3 hours minimum (I haven't tried longer).

So, respect and thanks to every developer and supporter of this great piece of software.

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

my HTPC is also very stable. But I am "only" using analog TV.

If you look at the dvbviewer forums you will also find some persons which have stability issues. Where do they come from? And why are some systems stable? (in dvbviewer and MP)

My personal explanation:
Bad BDA-drivers. BDA is a very new technology, so some vendors provide good and some bad drivers. Some vendors still work more with their own drivers and dvbviewer uses these drivers and therefore has better results (stability/speed).

MP only uses BDA, why? Because these vendors do not provide their SDKs to an open source project. They think they would expose "secrets". dvbviewer does not have this problem.

Other vendors are working very close with the MP devs like digital everywhere with their FireDTV series. Result: Rockstable BDA drivers and MP support.

Flip.

 

[joboehl]

I don't compare mediaportal with the applications which came with the TV cards. I compare it with another flexible, general perpose application which works nearly with any TV card mediaportal works with.

You know, I dont personally use DVBViewer basically because I don't have a DVB Device, but from my understanding:

- DVBViewer only support DVB devices. TVEngine3 (and 2) has to support not only DVB but also Analog and ATSC and are designed to work (even tough they might not be working yet) even with SW encoder cards. This by itself makes the engine different enough to a direct (technical) comparision in my point of view.

- DVBViewer and DVR uses local timeshifting (ie: each clients has his own timeshifting file). This is great for performance, tough it hurts functions like placeshifting, diskless operation and obviously you need more resources (timeshift files * number of machines for storage for example).

I don't have too much experience with TVEngine2, only the new one and I can tell you that it's one of the most flexibles I know of. And I counting on it's flexibility when ISDB cards become poping here in Brazil.

Don't get me wrong, I think those "gurus" have done a remarkable job building this application and it must be a lot of work doing it. I'm a developer too, but I wouldn't be able to do anything close to it in a reasonable time period. But maybe those "gurus" know how to tune the TV engine to a stable level but get overwhelmed by new feature request. BTW, building new features in an application is much more fun and you can harvest much more reputation than rework an application for stabillity and performance.

Well, you know TVEngine3 is the first Beta Drop. I think the team even took some extra time before releasing it because they knew people would start compare and hammer it against release/comercial software.

TVEngine3 is an excelent example for me (and i-loop post kind of confirms this). Theres probably more to come to the engine/client interface. That's why it has not even become Beta2 and I don't think frodo will promote it to RC before it has all the feature (at least the ones already published) implemented. My guess is that a full release cycle will not appear in less then 3-4 months, at best. Until there, beta against comercial software doesn't seems like a fair comparison.

I would like for MP to be more stable. Much more. But I don't expect that to happen before a proper release cycle (betas, release candidates and etc). In the mean time I know I'am in uncharted territory with SVNs (the only way to actually use the new TVEngine).

And also, If I compare the amount of problems I have and the ammount of bug reports, I think that one of the thinks that would help a lot the team of developers are more and better bug reports. if you follow the work they do, you can see how fast the solve issues correctly reported.

BTW, I used MCE for more than a year here with all the pacthes applied. You know what was my wife primary complaint? You guessed right: Stability.

Well, just my two cents.

 

[tpeosl]

finally lets say this.
i get the feeling that this seems to turn into a bad flame thread (mediaportal is shit, use VDR).
If that happens, then it will be closed.

hm, ooohkaay!

If this is the way critics are handled in this community, I will shutup.

Some final words from me too: I didn't said once "compare mediaportal to VDR" or "VDR is better than mediaportal". VDR is an Unix application and I wouldn't dare to compare it with mediaportal for many reasons. I just mentioned DVBViewer as a proof of concept, that it is possible to build a fast and stable TV engine using Windows and BDA drivers. Even in this thread there are some posters who believe, that DVBViewer only works with the native card drivers and that's not true. Once again, DVBViewer is not the better HTPC application, it is just an example that you could do better in matters of switching channels performance and general stability of the TV engine.

I understand that it isn't easy to take shallow critics from a newbie after so incredible amount of work spend in the project and if you can stand up and say honestly "mediaportal has the best TV engine on the market", go on and live happy ever after with your baby and forget, what I've said.

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

Even in this thread there are some posters who believe, that DVBViewer only works with the native card drivers and that's not true.

I did not say that dvbviewer only works with native drivers. I know that it works also with BDA drivers. But if you take a look into the dvbviewer forum, you will see that people, who have stabilty / performance problems mostly use cards with BDA drivers.

So, in my opinion, the hardware manufactures are to blame. They do not provide good (BDA) drivers.

But yes, you are right, every engine has flaws. Even the MP engine. But you are also saying generally, that it is unstable. And that's simply not true.

Flip.

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

and another sidenote already mentioned. If you have problems using MP than please provide decent information of your hard- and software including ways to reproduce the issue. Post LOGs.

If MP is to blame the DEVs will be luckily to get these infos and try to hunt the errors down!

Flip.

 

[joboehl]

finally lets say this.
i get the feeling that this seems to turn into a bad flame thread (mediaportal is shit, use VDR).
If that happens, then it will be closed.

hm, ooohkaay!

If this is the way critics are handled in this community, I will shutup.

Come on, the thread was not closed. Was just to avoid the mine is better then yours pointless threads that only cause confusion. Is up to us avoid that to happen and make this thread usefull to the community.


You might not have compared the two engines, but I think the thread title doesn't really means "look how those other engines are good. Can this one be good?". It looks to me more like "Use this other engines since your doesn't do a job as good as they do".

What some people are trying to show is:

- Is too soon to say TVEngine3 doesn't do as good as the others.

- The engines have some differences in concepts. Some things will be better in some engines, other things will be better in the other one. That's probably not going to change.

- No one is saying the TVEngine is the best in the world. TVEngine 3 is less then 6 months old !!!!! Now it's a promissing one, and I think no one can deny it and a lot of people are really expecting it to shape up in it's final form.

From my past experiences in beta programs, you can't hardly say anything about performance before a RC drop. Too much debug code in it and too much time spent finishing the features. The clean up only happens in the final stages.

Now, my response to your question (you know, the original one, " Why don't use a good working TV engine like DVBViewer or VDR?"):

"In order to accommodate the needs of all current users (HW Analog, SW Analog, ATSC, DVB), a very limited number of engines could be used (dvbviewer not being one of them), specially open source. Also, the development of the new TVEngine, set to fix some of the limitations of the current engine, is progressing nicely. It's still in it's beta form, but is expected to perform better and with more features than the current one.

And by the way, we think our TV Engine is good too. "

Well, thats how I would reply anyway.

 

[knutinh]

Other vendors are working very close with the MP devs like digital everywhere with their FireDTV series. Result: Rockstable BDA drivers and MP support.

Flip.

I think this is an interesting point. Manufacturers that choose to spend time (and resources) getting their products to work optimally with wide-spread used open-source apps like MP and general architectures like BDA should be rewarded with increased sales.

Manufacturers that try to obfuscate their "API" should be punished by decrease in sales. Like ATI.

-k

 

[infinite.loop]

finally lets say this.
i get the feeling that this seems to turn into a bad flame thread (mediaportal is shit, use VDR).
If that happens, then it will be closed.

hm, ooohkaay!

If this is the way critics are handled in this community, I will shutup.

if you quote me, then quote me correct.

finally lets say this.
i get the feeling that this seems to turn into a bad flame thread (mediaportal is shit, use VDR).
If that happens, then it will be closed.

If you have issues with MediaPortal, then please visit the support forums and start a thread with all required informations.
We will try to help you.

so, i offered you help, is that your way to respond to that offer?

Once again, DVBViewer is not the better HTPC application, it is just an example that you could do better in matters of switching channels performance and general stability of the TV engine.

you should be aware of one thing.

The fact that you have issues with MediaPortal does not mean that the concept or the code is the problem.
You said that you have not seen any system where MediaPortal is running smooth and without issues.

I can turn that around. I have not seen any system where i was not able to get MediaPortal to run flawless.


It is possible that you have found a bug which is causing the issues on your system.
But before anyone starts to blame MediaPortal, tests have to be done and logfiles have to be reviewed.


For the majority of the users, the current TV-Engine in 0.2.2.0 is not constandly crashing, or takes one minute to change the channel (when you search the forums, then you will find out that you are quite alone with this issues in 0.2.2.0).

If you want help to track down the problem on your system, then please start a thread in the support forums.

Until then, everything regarding this thread here has been said.