With discussions of charging for Media Browser now heavy, I have decided to start looking at alternatives for browsing my media collection and the only real choice for me seems to be going to a whole new front end – MediaPortal. The Moving Pictures plugin is the closest thing I can find to what Media Browser offers and so I have begun getting comfortable with configuring it.
I do want to say that I am not against Media Browser becoming ‘pay-for’ software. In fact, I believe it is 100% worthy of a price tag. Unfortunately, I’m not in a good position to purchase anything like this for a while. Especially with some of the proposed pay scales I’ve heard mention of (yearly subscription and per seat licensing would be way out of my price range considering I have multiple clients). Hopefully, things will settle down later and I’ll be able to get a license or two. I still believe Media Browser the best media organizer/presenter available.
Anyway, as I begin to learn the ins-and-outs of MediaPortal and the various plugins available, I’ll probably shift my content more in that direction. I’ve been a total Windows Media Center user for several years now, so this will be a big adjustment for me. Oh well, here’s to change!
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Hey Jon,
The Moving Pictures plugin still needs some work and the next version seems to be addressing a lot of features requested by users, especially loading local metadata and grouping.
I find that the best thing Media Portal has going for it is the TV Server, as it’s an excellent concept and provides full house TV distribution easily and was one of the main reasons that got me looking into Media Portal.
I still find VMC/7MC a lot better/easier for browsing music/pictures/movies (w/ media browser), but the number of options available in Media Portal, skins, user community, etc, it would only make sense to try out any available options out there, esp when they are free!
On a side note, here’s an issue I came across which I posted a solution for here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16717285#post16717285
Take Care
Yeh, I’m piddling around with the TV Server now. Not having much luck getting it installed on anything (failed on 2003 Server and I’m about to attempt on 2008 x64, but not holding my breath). I don’t really want to put a new XP/Vista/Win7 system just to run the TV Server and it doesn’t do me much good to run it on one of my HTPCs since they all go into standby when not in use.
MyFilms plugin has grouping, but I haven’t looked at it and I’m afraid I’ll be forced to create two databases (one for MyFilms and one for Moving Pictures) if I decide to try it out. My collection is way too big for that. I’m going to take a look though.
I’ve not noticed the freezing yet, but I have barely got an out-of-the-box install going, so time will tell if I need to apply your fix. I’ll keep it mind if I run into it.
Update:
Ended up needing that ‘fix’. Since I couldn’t get the TV Server installed on anything, I had to remove the client. Hopedfully, I’ll get to try it tomorrow sometime.
Here is a good startup guide that I followed when testing out MediaPortal:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1092168
Thanks. Used that guide forever ago and it worked pretty well. I’ve already got everything set up, I’m just getting familiar with it at this point. What I’m really waiting for is the release of Moving Pictures 0.8 so that I can have group support for titles. That’s the biggest killer for me right now as I have way too many titles to be thrown into one huge pool.
I think I had read on the Media Portal forum that MediaPortal 2 is in the works. It is about a year down the road, so that has gotten me a little hesitance to run with MP 1 right now. I would hope that once complete the migration from MP1 to MP2 would be seemless, but you never know.
Same goes for Meedio, where I believe MeediOS is going to be a major rewrite from Meedio Ultimate, but still a ways to go. I know some of the members over there have suggested that MeediOS will be the Media Center Software to end them all.
Well, a year is too long for me to wait…I’d imagine we’ve seen the last of any major additions to Media Browser, so the hunt for a new organizer starts now for me.
MeediOS always looked good to me also, but it just always ended up a total mess after installation. Half of it never worked and it just took way too much effort to get the simplest things going. If a rewrite is in the works, I’ll definitely be interested in taking a look if MediaPortal doesn’t steal the show for me.
Jon, this news is very discouraging. I’d be very interested in looking into Mediaportal. Do you have setup instructions that you follow, or suggest any particular plugins.
Before I switched to Media Browser, I’d been running MythTV SVN for 3 years, so I’m out of the loop with Windows HTPC applications.
Also, I’m wondering if I go with Mediaportal, if I should drop back to XP or Server instead of Vista. Any recommendations?
Thanks,
Zack
Damian posted a good guide a few comments back here. It’ll get you going with MediaPortal and StreamedMP, which is pretty much all you need to start with.
XP is fine, but you won’t get any hardware accelerated EVR with it. I’d probably stick with Vista or Windows 7. If you have nothing that will do hardware decoding, then XP may be the best for MediaPortal until version 2 comes out later next year.
I wouldn’t suggest server…I just tried it on 2003 x86 and 2008 x64 with no luck. All I wanted was a TV server but MySQL failed (I’m sure I could fix this, but I didn’t have the patience today) on 2003 and 2008 does not include BDA components necessary for PVR functionality. I’m just going to hold off a bit and then put up a dedicated TV server later – probably based on an XP installation.
Jon,
Being that you’ve been much more involved “behind the scenes” on mediabrowser, what exactly makes you think it will become a pay piece of software? Sam has explicitly stated that he will not be closing the source or start charging for it. Even if no other major features are added to the public code, isn’t it good enough as it is? Granted it has a couple annoying bugs(mostly Vista is at fault), but I feel sure that these will be fixed either by the mediabrowser dev team or someone in the community. Just trying to get some insight.
-Sinjen
I stand corrected. It seems Sam has gone back on previous statements on his blog… http://www.samsaffron.com/archive/2009/06/29/My+new+startup+Media+Browser
The one bad thing about Media Portal is that it is not set up for a Server/Client environment (i.e. setting up a central database on your server to be read by all your client pcs). What this means is that you need to set up Media Portal separately on each client PC and maintain separately. All my metadata for my media is saved on my server, so I prefer not to have metadata stopred in multiple locations. There is a way to make a centralized database, but it is not officially supported (http://www.team-mediaportal.com/manual/UserGuides/CentralisedDatabases)
Well, my biggest issues right now are just completing retrieval of TV metadata. The TV-Series plugin repeatedly crashes on me (Vista x64) and won’t run at all on Windows 7 x86. I’ve just finished a reinstall of it, so I’m going to give it another run. If it doesn’t work this time, I’m guessing I’ll have to put XP on this test system and go from there.
I’ll be centralizing the database and don’t really see any issues with that. No two systems will need access at the same time, so I can’t foresee any problem with it being locked. Hopefully, I’ll get far enough to see.
Damian,
The centralized database will work fine as long as you do not edit the database from 2 locations at the same time. That means that any options you configure for Media Portal (that requires a database like music/pictures) or any Movies you add/change for Moving Pictures will have to be done from one machine only at one time.
I’m waiting for MovingPictures version 0.8, as currently there is no way to load locally stored metadata, which I need. I would then disable (or delete) any of the metadata providers for MovingPictures. Hopefully this would still allow the movie to be added to the MovingPictures database…
Hi,
Mediaportal 1.0.2 is a good choice for a mediacenter software. The plugins available are great and the community helps where it can.
Server 2003 and 2008 are not supported because they lack packages needed by the TV server. In the mediaportal forum you can find guides on how to install it on a WHS, I suppose that guides apply to server 2003, too. (http://forum.team-mediaportal.com)
If the TV-Series plugin is crashing on you and you can reproduce that contact the developer, it is one of the most actively developed plugins: http://code.google.com/p/mptvseries/issues/list
Moving Pictures 0.8 is near, I guess. fforde wrote yesterday that he is almost done with the filtering … as for mp-tvseries you can follow the progress on its google code issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/moving-pictures/issues/list
I hope you have at least as much fun with MP as I do ;)
Thanks for the tips. Almost everything I want to get going with it just does not seem to have a workaround at the moment. I finished customizing my movie database a few days ago and when attempting to move it, along with the saved covers/backdrops, I lost all of those covers/backdrops on the new system. Everything was the same, so I’m not sure what the deal is there. I’m not going to repopulate the library (I only did half, but it was still over 1000 movies) and there’s too many to do it manually, so I’m stuck there. The TV series plugin won’t even let me enter the configuration on the new system with some TVGUI crash. When it lets me in on the other system, the manual episode importer appears to only work with episodes that do not have a series already defined in the database. It’s a very weird occurrence there.
Since Sam is generously going to offer everyone associated with the MB project a free license, I don’t feel I need to switch now, but I do have one HTPC I wanted to put on Media Browser since it’s an older system and can’t run Vista. On the other hand, I don’t know that I really want to upkeep another set of databases either.
I will continue to play around with it though…I can’t stand for something to get the better of me like this is doing at the moment :)
Jon,
All the Moving Picture coverart/backdrop is stored in the user/appdata/ folder IIRC. and so does the database (moving picutre & tv series).
Gary
Yeh, I had tried all of that but no coverart showed up. I had done a lot of customizing the titles and whatnot, so I wasn’t going to go out and refetch it. No way was I going to manually grab a new cover for 2000+ films either.
All in all, MediaPortal just hasn’t worked right for me at all…or at least the Moving Pictures/MP TV Series plugins. Both crash repeatedly and I’ve tried it on XP, Vista and Windows 7. I’ve yet been able to complete either database, so it’s pretty much worthless to me.
Maybe I’ll give it another try when 2.0 surfaces…