VMCE v Media Portal

dmck

Hi,
I'm currently running Vista Media Centre, apart from the poor file organisation in video's, pictures etc. I’m happy enough with it. However I have been having a look at Media Portal which seems to offer everything VMCE does and a little bit more (skins, rss etc).

Has anyone got any experience with Media Portal good or bad they could pass on? I have read that it might be resource hungry and also the WAF has to be considered!

Ta

Daith

dmck wrote: »

Hi,
Has anyone got any experience with Media Portal good or bad they could pass on? I have read that it might be resource hungry and also the WAF has to be considered!

Ta

Personally I found MP much easier to use, slicker interface and better plugins. It has a great plugin for ripped TV episodes that I and the rest of of the family love.

However I couldn't get the PVR function to work with Sky using s-video. It's not a huge thing for me (I just use the Sky+ box) but if you want to use it as PVR it might be a consideration.

FrankGrimes

Can you have both VMCE and MP installed at the same time on the same PC? Might give MP a look if so just to understand what the differences are.

SouperComputer

If ever there was a reason to use MediaPortal its the TVEngine. IMO, even skinned MediaPortal looks worse than VMCE, but thats pretty subjective. It can be taxing on resources, but VMCE is no spring chicken. WAF with MP should not be a major issue the interface is pretty intuitive.

Try it, you have nothing to loose

Can you have both VMCE and MP installed at the same time on the same PC? Might give MP a look if so just to understand what the differences are.

You can, just be sure they arent fighting over your TV card, make only one as a PVR at a given time or you will have aweful service headaches.

stoupercomputer

There are quite a few skins in media portal that would look better than VMCE. mp can't do all the shiny visuals and effects but the skins are getting much better. project mayhem 3 and x-face are the best. check them out for yourself.

on the TV side of things media portal cleans up. VMCE doesn't do half the things mp does: DVB-S, DVB-C, HD channels, etc.

plus it's open source so there are constant new additions and if there isn't you can request them or just give them a go yourself.

kaisersose77

Mediaportal is slow and buggy and looks years out of date imo. Ignoring the tv side, XBMC on a modded xbox is much better. There even copying most of the skins from xbmc. I hate the file browser look it has in every menu. Hopefully mediaportal 2 does something about the GUI, because it hasnt changed since day 1 and every time i install it, I get rid of it in no time as it seems like nothing has changed.

As much as ppl hate microsoft, i think vista mce is great. A htpc is something you want to have nice eye candy and thats what vista mce has. The mytv plugin looks great and theres also a movie collector that looks great.

stoupercomputer

The TV server is quite bugy but that is because it's still beta. The standard mp is rock solid now. i wouldn't agree with "I hate the file browser look it has in every menu."

you must be using the wrong settings because if you look at these screen shots then you can't say it looks dated?

kaisersose77

what screenshots?


The main skinning engine is the same as it always has being. Its not going to change dramatically until mediaportal 2 comes out. Any new skins are just fancier versions of the basic skin from what I saw a month or 2 ago. Of course featue wise mediaportal ****s on vista mce, but i think it still looks very dated and I wont use it as my main media center until they do something about it.

stoupercomputer

I agree in part i suppose. media portal 2 will use an brand new open source WPF skin engine. so hopefully it will match up to VMCE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation

leahcim

I used mediaportal for around a year and to be honest it worked perfectly most of the time. The main problem was that maybe once every two weeks it would crash or the menus would freeze. In saying that the problems might have been with win xp or system drivers.

I switched to mythtv four months ago and I am finding it more stable.

You should definately give mediaportal a go at least.

Culann

I installed MP on my XP machine to try it out, prior to getting my Vista PC with MCE on it, to source alternatives. I ran it twice and it crashed twice. Needless to say I kept with MCE and I have no complaints. Maybe I'll try MP again in the future.