Why use mediaportal? (1 Viewer)

[icefire2010]

Hi everyone.

I am not out to start a fight or to make a trollpost but I need to ask this question.

Why should I use mediaportal?

I have been using media portal on and off for 1,5 years now. I have always had problems with it.
Its is mostly the TV part of it that is quite frankly rubbish. It hangs on random intervalls.
Changing channel is an adventure that very often results in me having to reboot the HTPC or restart mediaportal.
It often decides that I don't have a tvcard anymore and stops working.

With new versions new and exciting problems would arise, like my newest problem with changing channels.

You see, using the channel up/down button results in a crash a 100% of the time. "Fun"

All this has made the WAF very low and even my own patience has been severly tried.

I have put up with it becasue I thought that this was as good as it gets with HTPCs.
Turns out, I was wrong.. By a mile!

I am now using GB-PVR and it works like a charm. The TV part is perfect and it does all the things mediaportal
does, like automount .iso using Daemon tools and what not. And hey, the EPG is working well for the first time in a year!
I'm so happy with my HTPC now and my wife is loving it.

So my question is genuine and I would love an answer. Should I keep trying to get MediaPortal to work properly and
if so, why?
What advantages am I missing by uninstalling it? What advances in the field of home entertainment are lost to me?

I know I will be flamed by some for this post, and before you use my spelling against me, english is my second languge.

 

[tourettes]

So my question is genuine and I would love an answer. Should I keep trying to get MediaPortal to work properly and
if so, why?

I think you have already answered to your own question. If some other application provides the needed functionality and works in much more stable manner I see no reason why you should be using MP. Both are free and no one is going to get hurt if you decide to use the other software.

 

[jameson_uk]

With new versions new and exciting problems would arise, like my newest problem with changing channels.

You see, using the channel up/down button results in a crash a 100% of the time. "Fun"

Perhaps you might have got somewhere had you raised this as a bugreport. I see this is your third post (second being a bump of the first)

So my question is genuine and I would love an answer. Should I keep trying to get MediaPortal to work properly and
if so, why?

If you are happy with GB-PVR then stick with it. I have been on the verge of dumping MP a few times but despite it not being as stable as other front ends I have stayed for a number of reasons

• last.fm plugin
• TV series plugin
• Moving Picture plugin
• Skins - I see that GB-PVR has three skins on their wiki and whenever I have tried this before I just do not like the interface or layout (same issue with SageTV)
• Progress.... when I first tried MP several years ago I gave up and used Meedio. Since then it has slowly got better and better but as this is built on a port of XBMC the code is now at a point where it is hard to maintain. Hence MPII That said MP1.1 is by far the most feature packed, stable version of MP I have used.
• Tweaking. IIRC GB-PVR (as with may other apps) has limited control over how things work. In MP I am easily able to set AC3Filter as the audio decoder for TV and FFDShow for videos without any issues (using different audio renderers too)
• Music setup is not great. MP is far from ideal in this respect but from my expererience of many other fronts ends it is not that bad.
• Integration of MPC subtitle engine in MP

Just a few of the top of my head which stop me jumping ship... Have been running HTPCs now for about eight years and MP1.1 setup seems to be the first time I have a fully working stable machine

But if you are happy with GB-PVR and are not interested in any of the above then you are not missing anything

 

[icefire2010]

True, this is my 4th post in a grand total of 2 threads. I'm not much of a poster, but an avid reader.

And again true, I would most likely have gotten help with the new problem and eventually solved it.
With GB-PVR though it just worked, out of the box.
It couldn't be easier to chose to decode with whatever codec you want in GB-PVR actually. You just use a dropdown menu in setup.

However, this is exactly what I was after. I want to know if there is any feature that MP has that I want and my new friend isn't
providing.
The thing is you see, I really want MP to be all I want it to be. For some reason, I dont know why, I really want to be using MP.
As it stands now, more speaks for GB-PVR though.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

These posts will always happen, and your very polite in your cristicism, so do not consider it flaming

Sorry that MediaPortal has a problem with your setup, for a lot of us there have never been issues with releases, 1.0.2 worked fine for myself for 6 months without failure on the TV side, so I certainly could not be critical about it, but then my setup is all on one pc.

Glad that gb-pvr has resolved your problems with TV, this is one of the area's that is being constantly worked on here, so hopefully one day you will come back and be a happy user.

Regards

 

[etheesdad]

Glad GB-PVR is working for you

Nothing more frustrating than a problem with an HTPC, particularly if WAF has dropped

Sounds like GB-PVR is doing what you need it to. I would have thought after a year and a half experience with MP you would be a pretty good position yourself to determine if you're missing something by using another solution. I think you probably have the answer to your question already.

Personally Ive found tvserver rock solid in the recent releases, but each machine is different.

Maybe if you find down the track that you miss MP, check back in another month or six? Constant development is occurring and you may well find the problem has been solved when you return.

In the meantime, perhaps the best thing to do is get the WAF back on track, before doing anything too risky

 

[icefire2010]

Thank you all for your answers.

I guess you are right. I have answered my own question and I will stick with GB-PVR for the time being.
I will continue to monitor MPs progress and try out the future releases. Im sure this is not the last time
media portal is installed on my drive

See you around..

 

[hoborg]

I am using GB-PVR too as PVR (i have analog TV signal only). Small, fast, stable, easy to use, no need to install SQL server, TV server, etc... I didn't miss one recording since i am using it.