Before anyone yells, I don't want anyone to look at this as a "Media Portal sucks" thread, or anything like that. I really like the product. Unfortunately, I don't think it meets my needs (or the needs of many other people). Hopefully the team will view this as constructive criticism to make MP better. I know I personally hope to come back to MP one day...
1.) It's too hard for my girlfriend to use. There are just so many little glitches. Things where I have to say "oh yeah, there's a bug, you need to click that twice" or "oh, the external display will say it's on the home screen even though it's really in DVD mode because of blah blah blah." All those explanations are fine for me and my programmer mentality, but she has this crazy idea that she should ask "why?" or say "that sucks." I doubt she's alone. Certain things just have little glitches that I think the technical userbase can ignore, but the mainstream users wont.
2.) After 6ish months, I still do not have working DVD menus. I've installed, the standard Windows Vista Codecs, NVidia PureVideo, PowerDVD, and WinDVD. None of them work. WinDVD was the closest. It works "sorta." On most DVDs, for whatever reason, the first cursor click does nothing visually (though it does work), but subsequent ones appear visually. However, I just tried The Simpsons Season 3 DVD and it failed miserable. The screen went crazy and froze up right after the 2th century Fox screen. I'd agree with many people saying "it's the codecs" except Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player handle the menus just fine. Why doesn't/can't MP use the same technology MS is using?
3.) The sorting of the channels by name is just plain wrong here in the US. It needs to be by number, not name. I've yet to find a way to solve this 100%.
4.) There is no way to record "first runs." Sometimes I don't want to record every single time a show is on. Sometimes I only want the new episodes. My EPG has the info in it, why can't MP take advantage of it?
5.) It seems more effort is focused on new features instead of bug fixes. I'm a software developer. To me, when I see "RC1" that means "feature complete, just working on some final bug fixes." However, with MP, it seems to mean nothing more than "newer beta" I find new problems between final-pre-RC1-SVN and RC1, and RC2. That shouldn't be. Don't add new features, get the current stuff working extra great.
6.) The support is horrible. When I first investigated MP, I heard how great the support was. Since then, I've only had a single person ever respond to me on IRC with helpful info. I was told maybe the problem was I'm in the US so timezone differences. However, I came on when it was about noon GMT on a weekend, still no one. Also on the forums, I don't know how many people have posted with me about the DVD navigation issues, still no one has answered the question authoritatively. That thread has existed for months. Someone needs to respond.
7.) You need a degree in computer science to set it up. This goes with the whole girlfriend argument again. I need to install SQL Server Express to get TV recording??? Am I really the only one that sounds crazy to? I have to deal with all sorts of crazy plugins just to get it to work in the US since Zip2It wasn't supported out of the box. Even then, I have to set up all sorts of account info. And then there's the config program. The install Wizard needs to be expanded a lot to be on par with Media Center. Setup was a nightmare for me and I do have a CS degree!
I do understand open source software is a pain to develop. I was a lead programmer for UnrealIRCd, an open source IRC server, for many years. You get very little money, spend many hard hours, and you really get very little appreciation. So I do understand the difficultly and I value all the hardwork you guys have put into MP over the years. What I'd just hope you do is look at MP from the perspective of the average user. Not the guy who knows that the DVD navigation issues likely have something to do with window focusing or something like that, the person who's going to say "that sucks" and move on. MP doesn't have to be everything to everyone, it just needs to do what it does well.
I hope to come back to MP one day, but for now, the hassles it has caused me have made it no longer worth it. I've gotten Media Center up and running with about 90% of what I had MP capable of doing. The difference? I got Media Center up in an hour, MP up in a little over 6 months.
Cheers and good luck!
1.) It's too hard for my girlfriend to use. There are just so many little glitches. Things where I have to say "oh yeah, there's a bug, you need to click that twice" or "oh, the external display will say it's on the home screen even though it's really in DVD mode because of blah blah blah." All those explanations are fine for me and my programmer mentality, but she has this crazy idea that she should ask "why?" or say "that sucks." I doubt she's alone. Certain things just have little glitches that I think the technical userbase can ignore, but the mainstream users wont.
2.) After 6ish months, I still do not have working DVD menus. I've installed, the standard Windows Vista Codecs, NVidia PureVideo, PowerDVD, and WinDVD. None of them work. WinDVD was the closest. It works "sorta." On most DVDs, for whatever reason, the first cursor click does nothing visually (though it does work), but subsequent ones appear visually. However, I just tried The Simpsons Season 3 DVD and it failed miserable. The screen went crazy and froze up right after the 2th century Fox screen. I'd agree with many people saying "it's the codecs" except Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player handle the menus just fine. Why doesn't/can't MP use the same technology MS is using?
3.) The sorting of the channels by name is just plain wrong here in the US. It needs to be by number, not name. I've yet to find a way to solve this 100%.
4.) There is no way to record "first runs." Sometimes I don't want to record every single time a show is on. Sometimes I only want the new episodes. My EPG has the info in it, why can't MP take advantage of it?
5.) It seems more effort is focused on new features instead of bug fixes. I'm a software developer. To me, when I see "RC1" that means "feature complete, just working on some final bug fixes." However, with MP, it seems to mean nothing more than "newer beta" I find new problems between final-pre-RC1-SVN and RC1, and RC2. That shouldn't be. Don't add new features, get the current stuff working extra great.
6.) The support is horrible. When I first investigated MP, I heard how great the support was. Since then, I've only had a single person ever respond to me on IRC with helpful info. I was told maybe the problem was I'm in the US so timezone differences. However, I came on when it was about noon GMT on a weekend, still no one. Also on the forums, I don't know how many people have posted with me about the DVD navigation issues, still no one has answered the question authoritatively. That thread has existed for months. Someone needs to respond.
7.) You need a degree in computer science to set it up. This goes with the whole girlfriend argument again. I need to install SQL Server Express to get TV recording??? Am I really the only one that sounds crazy to? I have to deal with all sorts of crazy plugins just to get it to work in the US since Zip2It wasn't supported out of the box. Even then, I have to set up all sorts of account info. And then there's the config program. The install Wizard needs to be expanded a lot to be on par with Media Center. Setup was a nightmare for me and I do have a CS degree!
I do understand open source software is a pain to develop. I was a lead programmer for UnrealIRCd, an open source IRC server, for many years. You get very little money, spend many hard hours, and you really get very little appreciation. So I do understand the difficultly and I value all the hardwork you guys have put into MP over the years. What I'd just hope you do is look at MP from the perspective of the average user. Not the guy who knows that the DVD navigation issues likely have something to do with window focusing or something like that, the person who's going to say "that sucks" and move on. MP doesn't have to be everything to everyone, it just needs to do what it does well.
I hope to come back to MP one day, but for now, the hassles it has caused me have made it no longer worth it. I've gotten Media Center up and running with about 90% of what I had MP capable of doing. The difference? I got Media Center up in an hour, MP up in a little over 6 months.
Cheers and good luck!