Media Browser and Windows 7 Media Center

dunks517

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I have been a long time admirer of Theydon Bois's Media Portal setup. The setup in my house relies mainly on Media Center and Extenders so I had to gaze at the video menus with the cover art from afar. :(

I have installed Windows 7 Beta and the Media Browser plugin:

videobrowser - Google Code

After a little jiggery pokery with creating virtual folders I have it running on my Main HTPC:

MCE Main Menu:

startmenu.jpg


Media Browser Main Menu:

mediabrowserhome.jpg


Thumb strip:

MediaBrowserthumbstrip.jpg


Movie synopsis:

MeidaBrowserfilmmenu.jpg
 
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Very nice - Do you know the benefits of 7's MCE over Vista? And thanks for the Kudos....:smashin:
 
Cool. Looks lovely. How are you finding it? Is it buggy or feature lacking at all?
 
I also have win 7 media center working on my htpc .. so far great much better than VMC in many ways.

The movie section now shows DVDs, mvks etc so all your movies show under one section.

HD Works great for TV except ITVhd does not work in win 7 media center, and bbchd even works on the 360 as an extender

All i can say im very happy with it and the wife and kids have not managed to break it yet not ONE BSOD !!!
 
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Another vote for Windows 7. I gave up on Vista early on so I can't compare to that, but the beta has solved all the issues I had in XP with no downside so far.
 
Many thanks for the heads up on this. I'll give it a go.
Also I have nothing but praise for Win7. I think MS release a duffish OS every so often so the expectation is not so high.
 
Cheers Dunks, for the pointer; just installed it and wow - just what I was looking for for VMC. I'd tried My Movies but didn't really get on with it, also I can't stand the way MS differentiate between dvd and videos, especially having used MediaPortal which did this bit better, so having it all in one place (again) with dvds and re-encodes is great.

Have you installed the Meta Browser? Also what view\setting* have you used to get the 'thumb strip' image you've posted? - doh just found thumbstrip under 'view'..

Tony

* I haven't really fiddled with yet or what ever docs there are, not that I could find many.
 
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+1 for media browser. Have it with VMC. But i'm leaning towards W7 on the strenght of seeing this!! Anyone try ITV HD with W7? This is a must for the footi. Would love for Channel 4 HD to get going on freesat to. BOOOOO to sky!!!
 
HD Works great for TV except ITVhd does not work in win 7 media center, and bbchd even works on the 360 as an extender

Aren't you finding that all TV on the 360 is really juddery when extending from a Win 7 machine? The tickers on Sky News and the BBC News Channel look really juddery - and they didn't when streaming from Vista Media Center.

My 360 is essentially useless as an extender from my Win 7 32bit system - I just can't watch something that jerky.
 
Hi

tried windows 7 on the day the beta came out, but couldnt get blu-ray / hd-dvd to work playing from disc.

Has anybody got this working as yet?

Cheers
Nathan
 
Hi

tried windows 7 on the day the beta came out, but couldnt get blu-ray / hd-dvd to work playing from disc.

Has anybody got this working as yet?

Cheers
Nathan

I'm having the same issues - TMT doesn't install at all, and whilst PDVD Ultra 7.3 retail will install, the patch updates won't (and neither will the pre-patched versions)

I hear that PDVD 8 may be better - but that doesn't support HD-DVD...

Don't know about WinDVD9.
 
Aren't you finding that all TV on the 360 is really juddery when extending from a Win 7 machine? The tickers on Sky News and the BBC News Channel look really juddery - and they didn't when streaming from Vista Media Center.

My 360 is essentially useless as an extender from my Win 7 32bit system - I just can't watch something that jerky.

Not had any problems with TV through my extender works fine
 
I'm having the same issues - TMT doesn't install at all, and whilst PDVD Ultra 7.3 retail will install, the patch updates won't (and neither will the pre-patched versions)

I hear that PDVD 8 may be better - but that doesn't support HD-DVD...

Don't know about WinDVD9.

I have the OEM PDVD7.3 installed that was supplied with the LG drive.
It does work (limited audio though) and has been updated twice although the registration screen always comes up. I guess a registry hack would clear this.
MC7 can play .m2ts files natively.
 
so with PDVD are you getting blu-ray playback, with full HD audio?
Cheers
Nathan
 
I have no problems with judder on the extender apart from the usual Freeview poor quality PQ.

I have now have coverflow running in Media Browser:

Coverflow:

coverflowcapture.jpg


Movie Thumb Art & Info:

Capture.jpg


Enjoy!

Damn you Dunks ;) Just got mediabrowser all set up with metabrowser and then this....

Anyway I've found a huge thread in the mediabrowser forum but, I think I'm being thick, I can't find the download - mind you I haven't read the full thread, so would you let me know where you got this from?

Cheers,
 
so with PDVD are you getting blu-ray playback, with full HD audio?
Cheers
Nathan

I've not tried a Bluray disk as I predominately use it for HD-DVD. The OEM version I have only supports 2.0 audio.
 
Damn you Dunks ;) Just got mediabrowser all set up with metabrowser and then this....

Anyway I've found a huge thread in the mediabrowser forum but, I think I'm being thick, I can't find the download - mind you I haven't read the full thread, so would you let me know where you got this from?

Cheers,

Here's the original thread:

Media Browser BBS • View topic - New MCML Layout for VB

Download:

RapidShare: Easy Filehosting

Make sure that you uninstall the original Movie Browser first.

Pressing shift and * gets you to the settings menu.

Duncs
 
Might be a bit of a stupid question but how do you make the changes with this? I've downloaded it and installed it but then what?
 
First time I started it, it asked to be configured (only seems to allow one folder/path, which is a shame).

After that, when you start it, you go "up" with the remote and change the view. I know what you mean though, when I installed it last night then first started it, I thought "not impressed". But fiddle with it for two minutes and I was "wow".

Cover flow isn't as nice on my machine - I have coverflow, but I don't have any artwork above the covers?

Also, on the movie info, the layout looks different - there isn't as much space for the movie info on mine, it's all "squish" up?

I still would like to get similar cover art for my recorded movies (without adding them into my movies collection)
 
I think Dunks is using Throgmortons beta build of a new interface which is why it looks different ?

But you can customise it by using images in folders , again its in the Wiki , but I havnt played with any of that stuff yet.

I installed the standard 2.0.80 media browser last night and certainly mine doesnt look quite as swish as those photos...however , it still looks a darn site better than MyMovies and im sold.

May well have a look at the Throgmorton build tonight.

Regarding pointing to more than one folder you need to create a virtual folder file inside your My Videos directory take a look HERE if you havnt seen it already.

My movies are on two drives on my server so I created a file with the following in and it works perfectly - (note the names I use are the UNC paths to the share names of the two disks, on these disks each film is in a seperate folder)

folder: \\server\Movies
folder: \\server\movies2
 
First time I started it, it asked to be configured (only seems to allow one folder/path, which is a shame).

After that, when you start it, you go "up" with the remote and change the view. I know what you mean though, when I installed it last night then first started it, I thought "not impressed". But fiddle with it for two minutes and I was "wow".

Cover flow isn't as nice on my machine - I have coverflow, but I don't have any artwork above the covers?

Also, on the movie info, the layout looks different - there isn't as much space for the movie info on mine, it's all "squish" up?

I still would like to get similar cover art for my recorded movies (without adding them into my movies collection)

I can email you a copy of my .vf file that you place the media location paths in, then you place the file in your Myvideos folder, you then point Media Browser at it. You can then create multiple files for different types of movie eg kids films etc.

I think Dunks is using Throgmortons beta build of a new interface which is why it looks different ?

But you can customise it by using images in folders , again its in the Wiki , but I havnt played with any of that stuff yet.

I installed the standard 2.0.80 media browser last night and certainly mine doesnt look quite as swish as those photos...however , it still looks a darn site better than MyMovies and im sold.

May well have a look at the Throgmorton build tonight.

Regarding pointing to more than one folder you need to create a virtual folder file inside your My Videos directory take a look HERE if you havnt seen it already.

My movies are on two drives on my server so I created a file with the following in and it works perfectly - (note the names I use are the UNC paths to the share names of the two disks, on these disks each film is in a seperate folder)

folder: \\server\Movies
folder: \\server\movies2

Throgmorton settings (the one with no settings menu at the top): Press shift and *

Any problems please give me a shout.

Duncs
 

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