Media Portal RC2

[Marshmallowman]

Media Portal RC2 is actually working very well for me.(last couple of months)

I though RC1 was a piece of shit, but the buggy pile of shit that is pinnacle TV center convinced me to give the new RC another go.

The pinnacle software that came with my dual hybrid dvb-t pci-ex card hangs the card in about every 5 channel change(requires reboot). It may be a multithreading issue as it was *kind* of stable until a put a quad core in my htpc

Media portal has not crashed on me at all, it allows me to set the main output as the second display(projector) , it also supports dvd playback file playaback (including dvd iso's). It also supports configuration a media server to playback all the above content on any computer on the network.

For a free product its good

big gotcha to lookout for is when you install and run it for the first time it has to configure a sql server(mysql or mssql) the password is mediaportal, not that they tell you anywhere.

[VJ]

I have tried MediaPortal, but it was quite a while ago... (almost 2 years go...)

What I'm interested in, is setting up a central computer which would hold tuners, music, ... and then the information from here over network to "simple" clients. Fujitsu-Siemens supports this with their Activity Media Center, but I wonder if there is a more open option to achieve it.
Is anything like that possible with MediaPortal now?

Jörg

[Marshmallowman]

Well yes all the above is supported, RC2 which seems to have fixed a lot of things was only released a couple of months ago.
I don't use it over a lan, but the MP uses a separate TV server process and another process for the interface, so its designed from the get up and go to work as a Media server.

It has sections of configuring tuner cards or you media sources, mp3, mpg, iso of DVD's ( i think it uses daemon tools for that)

The interface has been designed to use a remote, but I have been getting by with mouse/keyboard for now.

Also a lot of software,free stuff in particular does not support DVB-T , MP does support DVB-T very well. The epg is also quite decent and be configured to grab from a variety of sources.

It happily supports my dual tuner card and time shifting.

It still has one or 2 rough edges, but on the whole I am happy and have stopped searching for alternatives.

[VJ]

Cool!

I'm still in the "looking-at-my-options-phase", but that is great news...!

I'd love to set up the system with a central server and central storage. This would have the benefit that the clients can be quite simple (and thus quiet). At the moment, I don't even have a PC with a TV tuner (ran into compatiblity issues with the ones I tried, so I'll have to try when I change PC's).


Jörg