Normal
I think I should re-iterate my own experiences here having just moved from WMC to MP2, and I also have some views on how “friendly” the MP2 installer should be, and the relative advantages of integration over open source, and which one wins for me.Firstly, I installed MP2 first time (on a connected machine), without errors. The only part of the Wiki I read was the “installing Media Portal 2” section - and I did read it all - so I knew about the required downloads for supporting packages, and the Dokan / Windows update thing. As my machine's OS is regularly updated I didn’t foresee any of this being a problem, and it wasn’t. So as a result I never got to see any of the OP's error messages during install, but in this case I would agree with him: The installer should really be friendly enough to warn you of a problem before an error occurs, and give you a chance to fix it before proceeding.As for TV tuning – yes it is confusing, but again I was able to manage it first go simply by reading the relevant section of the Wiki. In fact the longest part of setting up the TV channels was actually waiting for the channel scan to complete. However, my hardware setup is very simple: Just a single DVB-S2 card with two tuners, and no CAMs to worry about. I didn’t change any of the default settings and it’s a good job because at this stage I didn’t understand what any of them actually did. Compare this to the WMC setup, which walks you through each step: 1) Identify your tuner card(s), 2) scan for channels, 3) select which channels you want to display in the EPG, 4) set up your screen / speakersm etc. I think this “wizard” approach has a lot of merit – especially for a first time TV server setup, as being confronted with the entire configuration tool just to set up channels makes it look far more daunting than it actually is.The EPG is where I came a bit unstuck. I only use a 7 day EPG which is broadcast over the air, so I expected MP2 to be able to grab this by itself, but I could not make it work. Luckily, I was already used to using EPG Collector with WMC, so I was able to get the EPG data sorted out very quickly using the XMLTV plugin (and again, the relevant section of the Wiki). Also, channel mapping from EPG Collector is FAR simpler in MP2 than it was in WMC.After that, I found configuring everything inside MP2 to be very similar to WMC (especially once I had the WMC skin switched on).It’s exactly one week ago today that I installed MP2, and as far as I am concerned it is now a fully working system, which has completely taken over from WMC on my HTPC. The next step will be to go multi-room, and I am hoping that will go equally as smoothly.I have my own take on “integration versus open source”, especially where WMC and MP2 are concerned. If the OP had been using the EPG on WMC then he would know that support from Microsoft has stopped and WMC users have already been forced to move to third party EPG providers (dependencies!). In fact, I don’t know why the OP uses WMC at all. A set top box would be a much better solution if all you want to do is watch live TV. I though very long and hard about going the HTPC route for precisely the reasons that the OP is stating. I probably took me two years to decide to take the plunge – and when I did, because of WMC’s simplicity, it all went surprisingly smoothly. As the OP said, WMC just works, straight out of the box.But: Where has all that “integration” got us WMC users? We ended up with HTPC’s built around software which has been completely disowned by Microsoft. We have nowhere to go for a solution other than back to separate boxes, or solutions like Kodi or MP. Its not just HTPC’s either. I have a Mede8er media player which currently acts as a client for my bedroom TV. This is fine for watching movies and listening to audio from my NAS, but the software on it for viewing online content was already out of date and useless by the time I set it up. There are more ways than ever to view media these days but the diversification is creating significant risk when deciding exactly which player to buy. And the reason is that the item for sale is no longer the player itself, but rather the media content, and the companies who can sign the best deals can and will try to make content exclusive to their own players.Personally, I won’t buy a smart TV because I fear that the software platforms and content that is built in to these things is always just one corporate agreement away from being killed off. I used to have a home automation / security system which relied on a subscription service to work. One day the company was bought out and closed down by a competitor. And I literally had £1000 worth of kit reduced to junk overnight.So… the HPTC should really be the ultimate solution to all this, and open source software should be the hero in this story. So why isn’t it? And this is where I really do think the OP has a valid point: A lot of this software is written “by geeks, for geeks”. Don’t misunderstand me, I can be the biggest geek on earth when I want, but when I get home I really just want to watch TV or listen to music without endless setups, reboots, having to update configurations, etc, etc. Something which seems simple to a code writer can be impossible for the end-user.The OP’s example of having no audio after initial setup is a good one. I had a similar problem – I had audio but no surround sound, as none of the relevant bitstreaming options were selected by default. I made a suggestion that part of the initial setup could be a wizard which asks simple questions about how your HTPC is set up (what kind of interconnect, how many speakers, etc). This suggestion was dismissed because it is "easy enough to ask a question in the forum".IMHO this is entirely the wrong approach, and a big part of why HTPC are losing out to smart TVs, the Amazon Fire stick, and so on. As good as they are, the setups dialogues are not friendly enough to be of use to the “average user”. I can understand why this is: Writing robust installers, wizards, and pretty GUIs which will hardly ever be used after the initial install is going to consume a lot of coding resources, which could be better spent on making MP a better product, but after that, where are the dependencies that the OP was referring to? Once the installer has downloaded the necessary packages, I assume that this will never need to be done again. My MP2 install should carry on working for ever. My opinion is that “integration” which ties you to a major provider is the biggest dependency of all, and as we have seen with WMC and we will see in the future with other devices, there are absolutely no guarantees that what “just works” today will work tomorrow.So… even though it may be the least sexy part of MP, making the installation and setup as simple and pain free as possible, and making the support forum the LAST place you should have to look for help, really is the key to the future of HTPC for a wider audience.For HTPCs, open source wins for me (there aren't any alternatives, anyway). Open source software resurrected my home security system (some of which I had to code myself). And now I have no "dependencies" at all for either.All in my opinion, anyway.
I think I should re-iterate my own experiences here having just moved from WMC to MP2, and I also have some views on how “friendly” the MP2 installer should be, and the relative advantages of integration over open source, and which one wins for me.
Firstly, I installed MP2 first time (on a connected machine), without errors. The only part of the Wiki I read was the “installing Media Portal 2” section - and I did read it all - so I knew about the required downloads for supporting packages, and the Dokan / Windows update thing. As my machine's OS is regularly updated I didn’t foresee any of this being a problem, and it wasn’t. So as a result I never got to see any of the OP's error messages during install, but in this case I would agree with him: The installer should really be friendly enough to warn you of a problem before an error occurs, and give you a chance to fix it before proceeding.
As for TV tuning – yes it is confusing, but again I was able to manage it first go simply by reading the relevant section of the Wiki. In fact the longest part of setting up the TV channels was actually waiting for the channel scan to complete. However, my hardware setup is very simple: Just a single DVB-S2 card with two tuners, and no CAMs to worry about. I didn’t change any of the default settings and it’s a good job because at this stage I didn’t understand what any of them actually did. Compare this to the WMC setup, which walks you through each step: 1) Identify your tuner card(s), 2) scan for channels, 3) select which channels you want to display in the EPG, 4) set up your screen / speakersm etc. I think this “wizard” approach has a lot of merit – especially for a first time TV server setup, as being confronted with the entire configuration tool just to set up channels makes it look far more daunting than it actually is.
The EPG is where I came a bit unstuck. I only use a 7 day EPG which is broadcast over the air, so I expected MP2 to be able to grab this by itself, but I could not make it work. Luckily, I was already used to using EPG Collector with WMC, so I was able to get the EPG data sorted out very quickly using the XMLTV plugin (and again, the relevant section of the Wiki). Also, channel mapping from EPG Collector is FAR simpler in MP2 than it was in WMC.
After that, I found configuring everything inside MP2 to be very similar to WMC (especially once I had the WMC skin switched on).
It’s exactly one week ago today that I installed MP2, and as far as I am concerned it is now a fully working system, which has completely taken over from WMC on my HTPC. The next step will be to go multi-room, and I am hoping that will go equally as smoothly.
I have my own take on “integration versus open source”, especially where WMC and MP2 are concerned. If the OP had been using the EPG on WMC then he would know that support from Microsoft has stopped and WMC users have already been forced to move to third party EPG providers (dependencies!). In fact, I don’t know why the OP uses WMC at all. A set top box would be a much better solution if all you want to do is watch live TV. I though very long and hard about going the HTPC route for precisely the reasons that the OP is stating. I probably took me two years to decide to take the plunge – and when I did, because of WMC’s simplicity, it all went surprisingly smoothly. As the OP said, WMC just works, straight out of the box.
But: Where has all that “integration” got us WMC users? We ended up with HTPC’s built around software which has been completely disowned by Microsoft. We have nowhere to go for a solution other than back to separate boxes, or solutions like Kodi or MP. Its not just HTPC’s either. I have a Mede8er media player which currently acts as a client for my bedroom TV. This is fine for watching movies and listening to audio from my NAS, but the software on it for viewing online content was already out of date and useless by the time I set it up. There are more ways than ever to view media these days but the diversification is creating significant risk when deciding exactly which player to buy. And the reason is that the item for sale is no longer the player itself, but rather the media content, and the companies who can sign the best deals can and will try to make content exclusive to their own players.
Personally, I won’t buy a smart TV because I fear that the software platforms and content that is built in to these things is always just one corporate agreement away from being killed off. I used to have a home automation / security system which relied on a subscription service to work. One day the company was bought out and closed down by a competitor. And I literally had £1000 worth of kit reduced to junk overnight.
So… the HPTC should really be the ultimate solution to all this, and open source software should be the hero in this story. So why isn’t it? And this is where I really do think the OP has a valid point: A lot of this software is written “by geeks, for geeks”. Don’t misunderstand me, I can be the biggest geek on earth when I want, but when I get home I really just want to watch TV or listen to music without endless setups, reboots, having to update configurations, etc, etc. Something which seems simple to a code writer can be impossible for the end-user.
The OP’s example of having no audio after initial setup is a good one. I had a similar problem – I had audio but no surround sound, as none of the relevant bitstreaming options were selected by default. I made a suggestion that part of the initial setup could be a wizard which asks simple questions about how your HTPC is set up (what kind of interconnect, how many speakers, etc). This suggestion was dismissed because it is "easy enough to ask a question in the forum".
IMHO this is entirely the wrong approach, and a big part of why HTPC are losing out to smart TVs, the Amazon Fire stick, and so on. As good as they are, the setups dialogues are not friendly enough to be of use to the “average user”. I can understand why this is: Writing robust installers, wizards, and pretty GUIs which will hardly ever be used after the initial install is going to consume a lot of coding resources, which could be better spent on making MP a better product, but after that, where are the dependencies that the OP was referring to? Once the installer has downloaded the necessary packages, I assume that this will never need to be done again. My MP2 install should carry on working for ever. My opinion is that “integration” which ties you to a major provider is the biggest dependency of all, and as we have seen with WMC and we will see in the future with other devices, there are absolutely no guarantees that what “just works” today will work tomorrow.
So… even though it may be the least sexy part of MP, making the installation and setup as simple and pain free as possible, and making the support forum the LAST place you should have to look for help, really is the key to the future of HTPC for a wider audience.
For HTPCs, open source wins for me (there aren't any alternatives, anyway). Open source software resurrected my home security system (some of which I had to code myself). And now I have no "dependencies" at all for either.
All in my opinion, anyway.
