Why I think I'm switching back to Media Center (1 Viewer)

[guytpetj]

An interesting thread.

I thought that I should add my 5 cents to this long line of stories. Not everyone using MediaPortal is challenged by bugs, incompatibilities and other nasties that can negatively impact the MediaPortal experience.

I’m working on a 3 weeks off, 3 weeks on roster somewhere in the middle of the Australian outback/desert, making sure the Aussies have a generous supply of oil and gas. This means that the 4 MediaPortal computers I have running at home have to do without my support for 3 weeks at the time whilst my wife and kids are using and abusing these computers to the max.

My main HTPC at home runs 24/7, is used every single day and is a multi purpose computer, which means it does a lot more than only being a HTPC. This PC is connected to a TV and a Monitor. Over the last year, my wife has not been able to crash this computer, nor did she experience problems with MP. It just works day in day out.

The other 3 HTPC’s at home are operated by my kids. Nothing worse for a computer than having kids play havoc with it. Again they use it for their homework, school projects, games and MediaPortal. Again MediaPortal runs fine on them, no glitches and it does not crash when I’m not there. All I do is update to a new SVN every once in a while. If I don’t like the SVN then I revert to the previous version I had running on these computers.

My 5th HTPC is in my room at work. This is my dedicated MP only abuse machine. When I’m at work I update this machine every night to the latest SVN, everybody needs a hobby. This might be the only machine that gives me grieve sometimes, but that is only because of me updating it constantly, and always playing with the configuration.

Is the MP installation really that hard? I don’t agree on that, I find it quite easy. Takes me approx 20 minutes to set-up from scratch, config the TV card, and customise it to my needs. It is possible that I find this easy because I’ve done it so often, but then again I’ve used MP since 0.1.0.6 and never run into big problems I could not overcome.

To me it is the best HTPC software around. It’s is wife and kids proof for me, and that is the most important being away from home a lot.

 

[Laban]

no, but our new baby will have the potential to make him switch

Shhh, dont tease them Chris! Let them wait and find out on their own...

Teasing of this magnitude are not allowed

Completely new MP using WPF and tv-engine in a MediaService fashion (tv-service, scheduling-service, audio service, video service) perhaps ? That's whats in my wet dreams at least

Very off-topic but:

The nice thing about WPF is that it's also very easy to create a xbab of say the tv page, assuming that you're doing a Navigation-Page setup which i would do. And that xbab would run in MCE and on the xbox 360 if configured properly. You'd just need to use the mce viewport and it would work on the xbox, afaik at least.

On-topic:

I tried MCE today since i got my FloppyDTV-DVB-S2 a couple of days ago. There are some serious problems with it though. I won't be able to use my (upcoming) DVB-T card for some of the free channels that i want since it doesn't have the same channels available. The guide is practically useless because the fonts are way to big. Though perhaps that's configurable, haven't looked into it. I don't get the guide for all the channels that i need, and i need to use some serious hacks to be able to use xmltv.

The video library doesn't work that well since it doesn't remember the last-viewed location in anything but the dvd's. And you can't move to f.e 00:45 in a avi, mkv.. movie either by pressing 0045 on the remove. You have to skip-forward to the correct location , and if you press to fast, you'll end up at the end of the movie. Among other things..

It has a rather fancy frontpage also, though that's not that hard to do in wpf

 

[herr_howard]

I appreciate the reply. All I'm really trying to get is the OTA information for my area. I have followed the threads for how this can be done, but I'm a little troubled that I have to install two separate programs to provide my program guide. Not that I have much problem with it, but I really would like to have a 'one stop shopping' environment.

Please don't get me wrong...I really love the program as it is, but I think there'd be a larger US audience if the EPG was a little easier to configure. I haven't made a final decision about a product yet, but that would go a long way towards helping my decision.

 

[Laban]

no, but our new baby will have the potential to make him switch

Shhh, dont tease them Chris! Let them wait and find out on their own...

Sorry about the rambling in my previous post. Should have had a closer look in the SVN rep..

 

[infinite.loop]

no, but our new baby will have the potential to make him switch

Shhh, dont tease them Chris! Let them wait and find out on their own...

Sorry about the rambling in my previous post. Should have had a closer look in the SVN rep..

you might find some hints, but the realy interesting stuff is not yet in it

 

[luksmann]

stop the teasing guys - thats so unfair -.-

greets, luksmann

 

[and-81]

It is unfair, I agree.

That's what makes it so much fun!

But seriously, I don't think we should be talking about it in public... Sorry.

Cheers,

 

[infinite.loop]

It is unfair, I agree.

That's what makes it so much fun!

But seriously, I don't think we should be talking about it in public... Sorry.

naaahhhhh

teasing is always a good thing. and i like the threads with all these wild speculations that pop up then.
most of the speculations might not be that wild this time, compared with the product.

 

[luksmann]

you could at least tell us an estimated date for the release of your "baby"...
I find myself checking the rss newsfeed every half an hour or so...

Make me happy

luksmann

 

[infinite.loop]

you could at least tell us an estimated date for the release of your "baby"...

after we got 0.2.3.0 final out of the door, you will find a big news entry about it