[MrBasset]

Hi,

I'm currently agonising over the decision of which HTPC application to use, I've been alternating respectively between XBMC, MediaPortal and Meedio (I'm limiting myself to the windows platform as this is where I have experience and programming ability) and have really been struggling to make a choice.

I'd really love to make XBMC my choice, but a few of my goals (I think) make that really difficult, some of these are:

• Watching / Recording DVB-T
  
• Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback (GPU offloaded)
  
• Very High WAF
  

From searching around the forums I know that it is possible to integrate XBMC with MediaPortal's TV server, and also to configure an external player. What is not easily apparent (well, without reading some 30+ pages per topic) is either how developed these patches are nor how stable. Nor how these would affect the WAF. I really don't want to try investing time in getting this stuff working and have to spend a lot of time tinkering and playing to get this working (and my wife doesn't like the current situation where she can't turn the TV on without my having to help).

So my question to the floor is just that, are these patches pretty fully evolved (what I have read would suggest not) and is the experience using them seemless within XBMC?

Thanks in advance for your replies,
~Dan

[kizer]

Patches are you download the newest version and install. Patch complete.

[MrBasset]

Hmmm, not quite the answer I was looking for perhaps I should try to be clearer.

How integrated are the patches with the XBMC runtime?

For example, with Vista MCE if you use the MyMovies plugin there is a pause whilst the plug-in loads (every time you access), it isn't integrated with Vista's themes so any changes you've made aren't applied so it can look ugly.

The TV app would need some sort of player, I assume using XBMC's own player, so the integration there would be good (fast and responsive, with any relevant theme bits - OSD - applying). The EPG though would need to be plummed in. Is it done so that themes work, does it even exist as functionality? I can't seem to find anywhere that lists the functionality available for the patch(es - there seems to be more than one).

The external player, I'm assuming will start PowerDVD or some such. Are their issues with focus here (particularly with IR remotes), is there a delay on start up or can XBMC start the app in the back ground when the PC boots. Is it even fully integrated so that there is no transition between the two.

Um, so that is the sort of thing that I'd like to know. I've scoured a number of threads but most of the time people seem to be talking about the conversion of CDates and so on. I've also not had much luck finding anything beyond the Unified PVR in trac and that is Linux only for the moment (and I'm not sure if much development is happening there).

Cheers for any opinions.

[fekker]

Hi,

I'm currently agonising over the decision of which HTPC application to use, I've been alternating respectively between XBMC, MediaPortal and Meedio (I'm limiting myself to the windows platform as this is where I have experience and programming ability) and have really been struggling to make a choice.

I'd really love to make XBMC my choice, but a few of my goals (I think) make that really difficult, some of these are:

• Watching / Recording DVB-T
  
• Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback (GPU offloaded)
  
• Very High WAF
  

From searching around the forums I know that it is possible to integrate XBMC with MediaPortal's TV server, and also to configure an external player. What is not easily apparent (well, without reading some 30+ pages per topic) is either how developed these patches are nor how stable. Nor how these would affect the WAF. I really don't want to try investing time in getting this stuff working and have to spend a lot of time tinkering and playing to get this working (and my wife doesn't like the current situation where she can't turn the TV on without my having to help).

So my question to the floor is just that, are these patches pretty fully evolved (what I have read would suggest not) and is the experience using them seemless within XBMC?

Thanks in advance for your replies,
~Dan

the windows side is easy
download a specific version and install to another folder
run xbmc.exe -p ... the -p means portable, it'll look into the current folder for userdata and such.

the external player option works great, and is very well documented. from a user standpoint, it just plays the movie/show.
There's work on the unified-pvr front going on, but I've not tried it yet. The myth support for playback is already in xbmc, and there's a few different plugins that work as well.

the folks working on xbmc are adding new things every day, there's a bunch of branches where folks are working on specific areas and really amazing stuff going on.

For me, xbmc is the best solution out there, nothing else even comes close.

for WAF - xbmc's a 10
my 2 year old knows how to play his shows in xbmc using the xbox 360 controller as the remote. he has his own profile, and i've customized the genre's of the shows, press down till ya see the picture ya want (which most of the time is spongebob) and press a.. he even knows that he can press down to rewind it when it's the last show he's allowed to watch for the night to get more time.

[rausch101]

Another option for integrating TV and XBMC without using any XBMC plugins (either because you don't have the associated program or because they're not developed enough) is to use XBMC for everything except TV and then use a program like EventGhost to create a button on your IR remote to toggle between XBMC and your favorite TV-playing program. It's pretty simple to do and there's all kinds of tutorials about it.

[MrBasset]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I took the plunge last night and started installing everything. Just playing around for a few minutes with XBMC and the mediaportal client convinced me that it's worth spending the time getting XBMC working. That and my inner geek wants to be playing around with this stuff rather than just install Vista MCE and live with that sort of dumbed down HTPC.

I'm going to try the mediaportal plug-in & script first, so we'll see how that goes I'm not so well versed with Linux that I want to try out the Myth stuff yet.

Thanks again,