Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="dandirk" data-source="post: 232151" data-attributes="member: 30279">I am a new MP user, but long time HTPC enthusiast.   I have looked at MP in the past both 6mo - 1 year ago, coming from myHTPC/meedio setups.My HTPC config and needs are what I consider modest.  DVD movies, DVD TV series, Mp3 all on a network server.  Throw in a little weather but thats about it...As a new user who is an experienced HTPCer and desktop admin (I install and test vendor created software for a living).  My experiences and problems are probably based mainly on my personal expectations brought from use of another HTPC system (Meedio).  At the same time, my "problems" seem at least to me to be very basic HTPC functionality and this is the reason for my frustration with setup.  I just assume that since MP is still in development is should be similar or better then an defunct app like meedio.  This is of course a unfair assumption but one I am still going to make.These may be caused by the open source nature of the project.  Also I have noticed a huge bias toward TV functionality.  This can be understood, most apps just naturally lean toward one nitch or another...My main example is how MP deals with Videos that made my MP experience frustrating so far...Video DB functionality is just medicore at best.  It features are even inconsistent with other areas of MP, like music.  Music has an ignore prefix option, Video does not. Music can use custom images, Videos cannot (without tons of manual updating and editing), Music Views have the "group" operator which allow alphanumeric listing, videos do not.  Importing is very limited and force file structures like Video_TS folders for DVD.Maybe I am too used to Meedio but the ability to custom create virtually any type of import based off a very simple code structure that MP3 tagging apps have used for years is almost a must and I just don't understand it... but ok I can live with that, I created Video_TS folders for all 400 of my movies and recopied them not a huge deal, a 1 time change.  So I spent hours doing that...I then imported and looked at my movies... Covers were odd for a good number of them, looked into creating folder.jpg file like with Music, found out this only works for videos if you are using Share view.  DB views only use covers downloaded from IMDB etc.  Ok wondering why I can do this for music but not videos but ok, I found I can from within MP select different covers and such... But if they are all bad I have to find and replace files in thumbs folder... again more hours of work going through my collection.  This is a pain, if MP changes DB or thumbs config I could have to do this ALL over again...... moving on with setting up my videos...  I then look and see that DB views based on title are using prefixes (The, A etc).  Do some searching can't find an option to ignore this but there is one in the Music section????  I have 50-70 movies that start with "The" alone.  No solution or even mention of this being an issue for other people.  So again I spent an hour or so going through the manual DB edit tool just removing the word "The" from the beginning of movies.Video Views...  another feature that is in the Musc DB and not Videos is the Group view operator.  I setup my music first and thought this was great I could setup my music to find all artists/albums that start with A, B etc.  When I went to setup my movies that same way, found this feature was missing too...  Not a huge deal, alphanumeric listings would be sweet but at least it doesn't force me to spend hours "fixing" it to the way I want it...Sorry for the rant, just some things I ran into while setting up my fairly simple system that seems to be one of those things that should "just work"...  Though thats me, I will setup the system and compare features with other solutions out there both free and pay (Meedio, DVDlobby, Xlobby, MP)Just my perspective on my situation and install, maybe I am a minority or a user that MP was not intended for.</blockquote>

Verification