Windows Media Center - Alternative?

[[GSV]Trig]

Originally Posted by aceuk

I vote for XBMC with the brand new Aeon skin.
Snipped pix out cos its damned annoying when ppl quote someone and keep all the pix in..

That looks ace, is it just a plugin for Vista MCE?
I've got Vista Home Premium at home on my new shuttle and dont really like the layout of it compaired to the old XP based MCE...

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by [GSV]Trig

That looks ace, is it just a plugin for Vista MCE?
I've got Vista Home Premium at home on my new shuttle and dont really like the layout of it compaired to the old XP based MCE...

No, XBMC is an alternative to MCE. It was originally built to use the original Xbox (hence the name) but as that was just a little under-powered PC, they ported it to full blown Windows.

That is also where MediaPortal gets its roots.

[TheAnimus]

Originally Posted by Funkstar

When did you try it?

MediaPortal v1 is final and 1.0.1 is on it's way fairly soon (only 7 issues in Mantis still to be resolved).

I've used it on and off for a long time now, and yes it was very buggy at times, but now, with a nice skin (StreamedMP is my currect favourite) it is a very slick setup.

One massive benefit over WMC, if you have a house, is it's client/server nature. You can have a large TVServer box tucked away out of site with all your storage and tuners, then small, quiet/silent clients connected to TVs to actualy play back content.

edit as always with these projects, if you have problems, report them. Bugs won't get fixed as if by magic is no-one reports them for the developers. If the devs were having these problems, they would get fixed

Unless you want the easy streaming tv from one room to another, media portal is really the poor man's choice funk, try MediaBrowser or MyMovies plugin for MCE. Hell even XBMC looks better!

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by TheAnimus

Unless you want the easy streaming tv from one room to another, media portal is really the poor man's choice funk, try MediaBrowser or MyMovies plugin for MCE. Hell even XBMC looks better!

Which is the killer reason for me to use MediaPortal. MythTV is an option I guess, but using linux? urgh....

Oh and using MCE, would involve buying copies of Vista that have MCE as it doesn't come with Business

The StreamedMP skin is derived from MediaStream on XBMC, so that point is moot. The MyTVSeries and MovingPictures plugins are pretty awesome, and far better than the built in MP stuff. Also got a pretty cool web front end for the EPG that I can get remote access to.

As standard, without any additional plugins or skins, MP does suck. Add a nice new skin and a couple of cool plugins and it is awesome. I've yet to play around with the emulator plugin

[Lord Filbuster]

Oh, it was before they brought out the new tv server, i tried reinstalling it, but i couldn't really be bothered to mess about with mysql or anything like that. The bits that did work were pretty good though. I might give it another chance, can you install it without mysql?

[Biscuit]

Myth TV was wwaaayyyy too much for me to get my head around i gave up with it pretty fast... might have to try it again sometime cuz it seems powerful.

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by Lord Filbuster

can you install it without mysql?

Yes, but then you are limited to the old TV engine, and that isn't maintaned anymore.

You can use MySQL or SQLServer. Setup isn't that bad now, they have a decent installer app that goes out and downloads all the required componets from MS, like .NET, SQLServer, SQL Management Console etc.

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by Biscuit

Myth TV was wwaaayyyy too much for me to get my head around i gave up with it pretty fast... might have to try it again sometime cuz it seems powerful.

Yup it is powerful, but releases are sporadic, so you need to grab the source and compile it. Unless someone is creating builds more regularly now.

Linux itself has come on a long way since I last played with it. I think Fedora was on 4 or something, now it's up at 12 isn't it? Getting DVB-T working now should be painless.

[directhex]

Originally Posted by Funkstar

Yup it is powerful, but releases are sporadic, so you need to grab the source and compile it. Unless someone is creating builds more regularly now.

Linux itself has come on a long way since I last played with it. I think Fedora was on 4 or something, now it's up at 12 isn't it? Getting DVB-T working now should be painless.

AFAIK there's a "weekly builds" service offered by the Mythbuntu people.

You're right about the release schedule though. I'm really looking forward to 0.22, the "full HD up the ass" release with GPU-accelerated playback, and a new UI system which enabled rather more awesome themes:



As for titting about with installation, as long as you use a modern distro and follow all the on-screen instructions fully, it's not too bad - even MySQL isn't too bad. And nowadays once the backend (server) is running, the frontends (clients) connect using UPnP so there's no configuration needed when connecting from anywhere on your network

[Funkstar]

Originally Posted by directhex

AFAIK there's a "weekly builds" service offered by the Mythbuntu people.

You're right about the release schedule though. I'm really looking forward to 0.22, the "full HD up the ass" release with GPU-accelerated playback, and a new UI system which enabled rather more awesome themes:

<masiiiiive image removed>

As for titting about with installation, as long as you use a modern distro and follow all the on-screen instructions fully, it's not too bad - even MySQL isn't too bad. And nowadays once the backend (server) is running, the frontends (clients) connect using UPnP so there's no configuration needed when connecting from anywhere on your network

Thats all good to know Hexeh.

Moving to linux is always tempting, but then I have all these windows licenses to use, and well, I'm lazy. So learning linux would be a bit of a pain

Something that really limits MP right now is that only the TV part of it is client server. All other configuration and settings need to be done at the client. Plugins are also local, so thinks like Moving Pictures and MP-TVSeries have a database for each client just now. Shares also need to be mapped for videos and music on each client.

MP2 should fix all this. This is a ground up re-write of MP, making it far more client server friendly and also a lot more modular. The idea is to help stop changes in one component casuing issues in another. Lets face it, every other media center app has been re-writen at one stage or another. The change in these apps over the past couple of years has been pretty huge.

[TheAnimus]

Originally Posted by directhex

I'm really looking forward to 0.22, the "full HD up the ass" release with GPU-accelerated playback, and a new UI system which enabled rather more awesome themes:

Wow, fully accelerated. and its almost better looking than the 2005 version of MCE that i've been using for what 4 years now, with full HD GPU acceleration.

Except, its nothing quite like media browser's coolness:

You can have the cool flip view, the gallery view, the way it links in the meta data works, and you have the full bio/find movie by actor thing, looking and feeling cool.

Also why in that shot is the background casino royal? Shouldn't it be the film thats in focus?

MediaBrowser does seam to be getting quite a large collection of icons for each category which is really nice too, people seam to be adding them fairly frequently for tv shows and films. I like this guys musings:
http://www.mediabrowser.tv/forum/vie...php?f=10&t=940

[easyrider]

^^^^^^^ Media Browser rocks^^^^^^^

[TheAnimus]

It is almost making me turn my back on My Movies.....

[easyrider]

Originally Posted by TheAnimus

It is almost making me turn my back on My Movies.....

Along with Metabrowser I don't see the point in My movies.

[looney]

I think why arcsoft epg doesnt work anymore is cos it needs some sort of subscription or something?

MediaPortal is good, another good one but not free is cyberlink powercinema. Personally i used progdvb as its a very light application.

What USB tvs ick do you have if you dont mind me asking? My freecom usb stick doesnt wok with vista medi acenter

[Gazza]

I'm also interested in finding a TV USB Stick that works with Vista MCE if anyone has a recommendation!