MediaPortal Stuff

[Mamba]

Since BM is dead (if not completely 6' under) I've moved to MediaPortal. MP seems to have the best collection of plugins, user community and price (free!). It was pretty easy to setup for the basics, and since adding the My Trailers plugin, and especially the My Netflix one, I've been fairly happy with the product.
The latter plugin rocks, as I was think'n about buy'n a Roku (and still may for the bigscreen), and with a few tweaks is working well enough for the Link machine in our bedroom. Really nice to be able to search/watch streaming movies using my RF Firefly. The bigger challenge will be moving my DVDLibrary collection over to Moving Pictures. Probably just have to start from scratch unless someone knows of an importer.

[cfaslave]

I'm assuming you're still using BTV for the TV stuff but was wondering how you like the TV-portion of MediaPortal (if you've tried it)? I've never felt it was up to par with the competition in that category which along with some difficult setup & stability issues kept me from using it for very long.

[Mamba]

Frankly I've not bothered to try their TV; BTV works very well for that and co-exists nicely with MP. My only gripe with MP is that their forum support isn't up to the same quality levels as here. But then it is more international so there are culture, timezone and language factors to consider.

[ZetaVu]

Yeah, the forum is way behind and a lot of my favorite plugins are not being updated (like mpblue). Tv is a pain to setup, especially for satellite systems. They use a scraper for guide which isn't so hot, there are alternatives I haven't tried. The way they broke the tvserver from the rest of Media Portal makes it ideal to run with BTV in my opinion. If it weren't for Media Portal I'd probably be on Sage now (I think MP's non tv functions are better than Sage) It's also not as bulky as meedios or some of the other htpc apps.

[Mamba]

>makes it ideal to run with BTV

Agreed...best complimentary software I've found. BTV does TV very well but finding the missing media center software to go with it can be a chore. I tried MP long ago, but at that time just too many rough edges. Today IMO it still has a few but is now worth the learning curve.

[mboehler]

How do you go about adding BTV into MediaPortal? I am EXTREMELY impressed with the way Beyond TV works. I have tried Media Portal's TV server, but it just doesn't work that well. Using it as a front end to BTV would be pefect.

Thanks,
Mark

[ZetaVu]

I just use them side by side, and let my remote launch either BTV or Media Portal. Another option is to set a launch point for BTV in Media Portal. To have all BV features run out of MP would take a little effort. Movie playback is not a problem, but getting guide and dealing with recordings, that needs to be done in the BTV interface or the webadmin. Theoretically, someone could put a community webadmin page up for guide data and recording management, and those could be turned into a plugin for Media Portal. Then you could just run BTV as a server and Media Portal is the front end.

I actually prefer the BTV playback to Media Portal, the only time I use MP's video is when I want to make a movie playlist, link video clips together and play, otherwise I watch everything in BTV.

[mboehler]

Oh, okay. I was thinking something like when you click My TV in MediaPortal, it takes you to the Beyond TV page. Then when you close the screen, it goes back to MediaPortal.

[SmokeWatcher]

There is a way to add BeyondTV to the MP menu. You click it to launch BTV, then when you exit the UI, it goes back to MediaPortal. It's a small pain to get working, but when it works it's sweet! You'll need to do a search and sift thru the results.

[ZetaVu]

Well, you can look at application launchers in media portal. This is probably your best bet MEDIAPORTAL - free media center - MultiShortcut . This is an old one, may not work with the current version MEDIAPORTAL - free media center - EasyApps

[gobucks]

Multishortcut does work with the current version of MP to launch BTV. It's a small hassle to setup, but once it's configured, you're good to go.