Story of MediaPortal veteran trying XBMC
#1
After almost 4 years using Media Portal I have finally decided to try alternativies. I've got quite a few database corruptions lately with MePo and definitely need more steady configuration. After 1 day of researching and 1 evening of testing XBMC I decided to write down my experiences here so
ppl in same position might actually get something out of my experiences and perhaps gurus here could help me with my issues.

Little more background first, I build my HTPC about 4 years ago, its still pretty much the same. I'll list my config later on. I've used MePo for long time and I'm familiar with it. I've tried exporting / saving up my databases / configs, but usually ended more screwed up installation when I used them. That's why I usually ended up doing complete reinstallation of MePo about 3-4 times / year. At this point where I barely get 1-2 hours of "free time" in the evening, this is not just acceptable anymore. I cannot spend my time setting this up all over again and again. I've tested XBMC now and then so that I knew it was there. After some research I saw that there is some PVR development happening so I decided to give it a try finally.

My configuration :

Case : SilverStone LC10
MoBo : Gigabyte GA-EP41-UD3L
CPU : Intel E5200
Memory : 4Gb
GFX : MSI GF9500GT Passive Cooled
HD : OCZ 64Gb SSD + 1Tb storage
OS : Win7Pro

Experiences after first evening (25/07/12) :

So, I cleaned all old MePo files, databases, registeries etc. Then I reinstalled MePo TvServer. Had to edit dvb-c tuning files a bit cause seems my service provider had changed frequencies once again. Scanned channels and quickly mapped webepg to channels. I also grabbed epg at this point. After that I installed Dushmaniacs xbmc-pvr build, everything started up fine, then I setup tv and installed new skin ( aeon-nox ) and suddenly I couldnt find live-tv icon or settings for tv anymore...
Little tinkering and I decided to reinstall xbmc and vóila, they were back there ( must have funked something on that skin ). So this time I stayed a while with default skin and decided to try live-tv. Setup the addon, quickly checked channels / epg settings and wuhuu, it actually works. Tuning at first seemed to take a bit long, but looks like it was only at beginning. In the end channels opened in few seconds and switching channel took barely second, which is ok for me. Unfortunately at this point I started to have some problems, when switching channels with up/down arrow, randomly resulted in xbmc hanging up. Looks like XBMC actually is running behind, I can hear sounds when I move with arrow keys etc, but nothing happens. I just got this circle going around and around for ever. At this point I had to force-kill xbmc. This happened like every 10th channel change or something. Well, I didnt worry about that much and decided to try sort out the channels? After a while fiddling with settings I managed to use manage groups and setup decent arrangement for channels. Even the EPG seemed to work out the box ( I guess it pulls it out of tv-server database, where I stored my webepg earlier ). Another hangup and had to restart xbmc and the channel arrangement I had just done was reverted to normal state. Thank god my groups where still there, so I just chose that and everything was good. Decided to restart xbmc to test channels again and yet again they reverted to normal state.
At this point I also started to get some crashes. Again randomly when I entered live-tv xbmc just crashed. I ended up getting some 4-5 crashes in that 3 hours I spend setting it up. As it is still wip, I understand that this might happen. I also tested "movies" section while there. I have few .iso / .img files on my NAS for my kids, that they can easily watch their dvd's ( this is so that the movies have Finnish as a spoken language ). Somehow xbmc just found .img files and completely ignored .iso files? I assume this is just a small tuneup in settings file, as it is in Media Portal, so not a big deal here. Anyway, XBMC opened the file lightning fast. With MePo I usually had to wait some 15-20 seconds for it to open the actual image-file while XBMC did it in mere seconds. Astonishing! Also the screen looks a bit sharper, might just be my imagination but whoa, I was happy with it Nod. Also installed ForTheRecord to manage recordings a bit more easily, but as it was almost midnight, I had to stop setting it up and goto sleep.

At this point I have decided to give a try to argus as a backend and try margro's build. Hopefully that will be a bit more stable, both in channel switching and not crashing up. Considering the general speed of XBMC, Im not that sure that I want to go back to MePo. Big Grin

Also, I haven't run XBMC in debug mode and thus don't have logs, but I'll try to get some logs stored up before I make the change.

Oh, and Hi to all and sorry for the marvelous english Wink =)



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#2
So, finally during the weekend had time to fine tune things around. Went and bought bray-drive friday and managed to install it on saturday. I also changed to margro's pvr build like I stated above and all the hangs when changing channel were gone. Altho, still with aeon-nox skin I had random crashes so my current skin is Transparency.

Overall everything is looking good. PVR is decently stable for use. I've still got somethings to learn about naming the movies, as I have imported my library and there are few oddities, I just cannot fix atm. Like moves\cars[2006]\cars[2006][DVD].iso is somehow scanned as a Buster Keaton movie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020442/ ). I guess there's option to manual correct these? Need to search for tips about these. Also got all Toy Story's there ( named as a Toy Story 1, Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 ) and XBMC finds them all as a Toy Story 3.

4TheRecord seems good backend, havent had troubles with it at all and so far everything has went smoothly with it. I also set webgrab+plus to fetch EPG data from few local sites. This seemed to work very well indeed with 4therecord. XBMC plugin is still giving me some troubles tho.
Mainly with channels, I can sync groups with backend fine etc, but always when I start xbmc it seems to revert back to "all channels", which is not exactly the group / channel order I want and lazy as I am, I'm not interested to sort / arrange 200+ channels. Also now and then, when starting XBMC it gives XBMC - ForTHeRecord - PVR GUI message, I guess its error message and PVR is not started. Haven't had time to dig into this yet, so it might be easily solvable.

Oh and In general xbmc is working super smooth, but with bray playback, I have some sync issues / playback hangs. Might be my old CPU or settings. Also my temporary remote solution, that terratec bad remote which was included with the cinergy pci hd, seemed to work-out-of-the-box.
This was a big relieve for now. My case's FW is so old that it doesnt support anything else except IMON PAD, so I have to find IR-receiver for the new remote somehow. Those USB version seems to be quite rare nowadays Sad
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#3
Here's a solution to the problem with the scraper picking the wrong movies:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Imp...ing_an_URL
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Story of MediaPortal veteran trying XBMC0