Fed up of WMC, what next?

GrahamW

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I have 2 WMC in the house, all with HD dual tuners and the guide, updates, restarts required, missing recordings is doing my head in.

I need to add another HTPC to the mix for a new room that will be fed into my amp and shared between TV and projector. I have a Qnap so I could centralise the storage. All machines are connected over gigabit, so streaming shouldn't be an issue.

Any ideas on what to do to centralise all the recordings and to record live TV, then to view on any client side? Should I look at a Chromecast (have one to play with), AppleTV (have 2 of these) or install an App on my Samsung Smart TVs or head down the Raspberry PI XMBC route as a client front end.

The main thing keeping me with WMC is that you can watch programmes on 1.5x with the audio, so you can get through box sets quite quickly etc. Also discovered that VLC can play quicker too on certain forms.

Also needs to have the WAF and easy to use. I've had a play with MediaPortal but can never seem to get a good setup, especially with Live TV.

TIA
 
Hello!

I was a die hard user of WMC for about 7 years, but switched to MediaPortal a couple of years ago. And just recently I have switched to MediaPortal with Argus TV as the back end TV server. It has been faultless so far, but does require some patience to get set up right.

I have posted a little video:

Video demo of MediaPortal 1 with Argus TV | AVForums
 
You can use the Qnap as TV server, just plug in a usb tv / sat tuner to it and with DVB Link server installed on the qnap and the client installed on your computers / mobile devices you can watch live tv and record it to the server. Saves you form having your media pc's on all the time.
 
You can use the Qnap as TV server, just plug in a usb tv / sat tuner to it and with DVB Link server installed on the qnap and the client installed on your computers / mobile devices you can watch live tv and record it to the server. Saves you form having your media pc's on all the time.
I've had a play with the TV Station with some mixed results. Maybe I need to ensure I use the right USB tuner. Also did not seem to be able to get HD quality either.
 
I've briefly tried MediaPortal and OpenELEC (effectively XBMC). Admittedly I didn't play with them for too long as I found their UIs to be either awful or downright terrible (What? You actually want to use those playback buttons on your nice Windows remote? Fat chance...). And MP crashed a few times, which was a few times too many for my liking.

I'm not averse to tinkering and often relish the chance to do so, but I could see myself having to tinker with these two a LOT before I got them into any sort of usable shape. WMC7 has plenty of things I don't like (such as the broken updates, missing schedules, randomly not being able to record stuff), but for the most part it does the job of allowing me to watch TV without sucking up huge amounts of my time. I guess at my age I've lost the virtue of patience and just want stuff to work... :blush:
 
Windows remote works out of the box on OpenElec. No tweaking required.
 
Windows remote works out of the box on OpenElec. No tweaking required.

Em, not all Windows remotes work. I can certainly testify to that as I'll never get all those wasted hours back!

D.
 
I've briefly tried MediaPortal and OpenELEC (effectively XBMC). Admittedly I didn't play with them for too long as I found their UIs to be either awful or downright terrible (What? You actually want to use those playback buttons on your nice Windows remote? Fat chance...). And MP crashed a few times, which was a few times too many for my liking... :blush:

Maybe you should have given them more than just a brief outing. I've been using MediaPortal for 2 years and every single person I've showed it to has had to pick their jaw up off the floor. They all instantly wanted the exact same setup in their lounge...

The UI is fantastic. It works out of the box with all HP MCE remotes. Those are the most sought after remotes for MePo. The odd second hand one pops up on eBay every now and then.

The StreamedMP skin is bloody stunning. And you can change the backdrops at your leisure to keep it looking fresh.

Granted though, way back around v1.2 they didn't have a release schedule and releases were a yearly event and it was buggy as hell. Now they are every couple of months and stability has improved massively.

Take a look at some of the recent videos posted up of MePo in all its glory. I think you might actually like it (now) if you take the time to set it up properly to unleash its full potential... (And get an HP remote)
 
For what its worth, at the weekend I ditched Win7 + various extenders and went for a MediaPortal setup with new headless Hp Proliant server and 3 Intel NUC clients. So far really liking the experience, still a few things to iron out but will try and write up the overall process here soon.
 
So just an update here, I'm trialling MediaPortal 1.8 with Argus TV with StreamedMP. Looks great. Just need to try and work out my X10 remote with it. Also scheduled are recordings are not working. Creates the folder but not content. Need to have a play.
 

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