Trying Windows 7 Media Center . . [Archive] - Page 2

View Full Version : Trying Windows 7 Media Center . .

Pages : 1 [2]

|JuiceZ|

11-20-09, 12:21 PM

Will do. Boxee is basically a fork of XBMC, so you know how well it will run. I guess what makes it nice is the web apps and the social networking aspect of it. I like to see what my friends watch, listen to, etc.

Same here. Have you heard about the "Boxee Box" (http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/12/boxee-inks-deal-with-first-hardware-partner-a-boxee-box-is-co/) coming next year? It should be the first of many.

six_storm

11-20-09, 01:05 PM

Same here. Have you heard about the "Boxee Box" (http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/12/boxee-inks-deal-with-first-hardware-partner-a-boxee-box-is-co/) coming next year? It should be the first of many.

Yeah, it looks awesome. I'll have to see what hardware it sports but I may be putting a small box together for my bedroom; I'll stream my media in there too! :D

einstein_314

11-20-09, 07:18 PM

I have all of my media stored on my main workstation and have mapped network drives on the HTPC. Metabrowser is running on the HTPC.

I did notice that Metabrowser finally started automatically downloading the metadata, but it's still not showing up right in WMC.

Boxee is still rocking and rolling, so I may stick with it. One thing I forgot about was the simple fact that it can run ISOs in a single click without installing DeamonTools for MediaBrowser.

I still haven't configured my Harmony remote but it's on the list of things to do.

Also, I'm replacing my 720P 32" Westinghouse with a 1080P 40" Sony Bravia tomorrow night ;)
Okay, you do realize that MetaBrowser won't automatically download metadata for stuff you already have. You need to do a manual "process all movies" to get the metadata for stuff you already have. You will then be greeted with a screen to confirm that the right movies are being detected (and you can change which one it should be there too), then you click "process" and it gets everything it can.

Then if you setup folder watching, it will automatically download the metadata for anything you add to the folder that's being watched.

When you say it's "still not showing up right in WMC" do you mean in MediaBrowser? Because Media Center won't recognize the metadata.....So, is anything showing up in mediaBrowser? Or only parts of the metadata? Have you tried clearing the cache? (either from the options page, or manually by deleting "c:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Cache").

It should really just work...

mullet

11-20-09, 11:02 PM

Same here. Have you heard about the "Boxee Box" (http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/12/boxee-inks-deal-with-first-hardware-partner-a-boxee-box-is-co/) coming next year? It should be the first of many.

That's slick dude. I was just in Louisville that place is crazy.

six_storm

11-22-09, 11:41 AM

Okay, you do realize that MetaBrowser won't automatically download metadata for stuff you already have. You need to do a manual "process all movies" to get the metadata for stuff you already have. You will then be greeted with a screen to confirm that the right movies are being detected (and you can change which one it should be there too), then you click "process" and it gets everything it can.

Then if you setup folder watching, it will automatically download the metadata for anything you add to the folder that's being watched.

When you say it's "still not showing up right in WMC" do you mean in MediaBrowser? Because Media Center won't recognize the metadata.....So, is anything showing up in mediaBrowser? Or only parts of the metadata? Have you tried clearing the cache? (either from the options page, or manually by deleting "c:\ProgramData\MediaBrowser\Cache").

It should really just work...

Whether I did everything manually or just did folder watching, it would not download random things. And yes, my folder/filename structure is all the same. I made sure.

einstein_314

11-23-09, 10:55 AM

Whether I did everything manually or just did folder watching, it would not download random things. And yes, my folder/filename structure is all the same. I made sure.
Hmm, by "random things" you mean like sometimes it wouldn't get a backdrop, or sometimes it wouldn't get covers, or sometimes metadata? Have you checked to see if the missing items are even in themoviedb.org? (that's where it gets it's metadata from). Although it should be there....I mean I have ~180 movies, some of them pretty obscure, and I'm only missing backdrops for 2 of them.

Did you try clearing your mediabrowser cache? I don't know what else to suggest...other then uninstalling it all and trying again.....

six_storm

11-23-09, 11:14 AM

Hmm, by "random things" you mean like sometimes it wouldn't get a backdrop, or sometimes it wouldn't get covers, or sometimes metadata? Have you checked to see if the missing items are even in themoviedb.org? (that's where it gets it's metadata from). Although it should be there....I mean I have ~180 movies, some of them pretty obscure, and I'm only missing backdrops for 2 of them.

Did you try clearing your mediabrowser cache? I don't know what else to suggest...other then uninstalling it all and trying again.....

Yes, I did try clearing cache.

What I meant about "random", was that out of all the Family Guy episodes I have, It would just get the metadata for random episodes. The rest it wouldn't do anything for.

I'm not real worried about it anymore TBH. Boxee is rocking mah socks so I'm just about sold ;)

So I did get my new TV this past weekend and I tried to stream a 1080P of Star Trek across the network. At first, it lagged a little but after closing and reopening Boxee, it worked flawlessly. Yeah, I think I'm sold on Boxee. :D

six_storm

11-25-09, 10:06 PM

So I just found something that REALLY is a deal breaker. Wifey rented a DVD, put it in the HTPC and NOTHING HAPPENED in Boxee. WTF!?!?

I just haven't had the time to really extensively test out Boxee so I guess this is what I get. Until I see the Boxee Beta next month, I may have to go back to XBMC and pick a decent skin to deal with. At least I know that works 98%.

|JuiceZ|

11-26-09, 09:18 PM

That's interesting. I've tried having an all-in-one box and it just didn't work, wasn't reliable enough. We use XBMC for viewing local HD content and a BDP2550 for Bluray/DVD/Netflix/Pandora.

mullet

11-26-09, 09:59 PM

six_storm

11-26-09, 10:30 PM

What about Media Portal do you guys hate so much, I am able to play DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/.ISO with no problems at all. Smooth as silk with no hangups or glitches. What am I missing?

Win 7 64bit
Mediaportal
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum
Daemon tools

I've never tried it (at least I don't think). XBMC has always worked out the best for me and I guess my little experiments have shown I need to stick with it. I may give MP a shot, we'll just have to see how much extra time I have this weekend.

So now I'm trying out the latest Beta of XBMC and it's new default skin "Confluence". It's basically MediaStream with a few small tweaks, but it's nice. Once I can get my Movie Library back in order, I think I'll have everything working again.

|JuiceZ|

11-26-09, 11:06 PM

Media Portal is nice and I do like the PVR functionality but I tried it and it doesn't work for me. I'm huge on GUI's and even with the skins, which the best are copies of XBMC skins, don't work for me. Also there's no linux version.

The new default skin "Confluence" is nice. Primarily use Alaska (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=milbsbnWP8g) with "red slate" textures

mullet

11-27-09, 07:48 AM

As long as it does what I want, I am not huge on it has to look cool in order to use it. There is some pretty good skins and plugins for MP but you have to look. I use an external player for all my playback, I have never liked any of the internal players.

nekrosoft13

11-27-09, 08:59 AM

So now I'm trying out the latest Beta of XBMC and it's new default skin "Confluence". It's basically MediaStream with a few small tweaks, but it's nice. Once I can get my Movie Library back in order, I think I'll have everything working again.

confluence is a nice skin, hopefully they keep expanding it. i'm still using Aeon Hitched Ekim version, to bad DJH abandabled Aeon project, but i geuss it worked out for the best he was a stubborn dev.

six_storm

11-27-09, 02:06 PM

confluence is a nice skin, hopefully they keep expanding it. i'm still using Aeon Hitched Ekim version, to bad DJH abandabled Aeon project, but i geuss it worked out for the best he was a stubborn dev.

djh was a weird guy. He was always bitter from what I read in his posts.

Once the wifey and I can get the rest of the Christmas stuff up, I should have some time to work on it and get my movie library indexed. XBMC doesn't like when you have individual folders for some reason . . .

six_storm

12-05-09, 01:53 PM

My dad bought an ASROCK Ion 330 for his HTPC and I was able to set it up today. I installed Windows 7 x64 and XBMC Camelot. One thing we noticed right off the bat was that XBMC could not run GPU Hardware Acceleration properly. MKVs were extremely laggy.

So I found a cool website that showed me how to run Media Player Classic in full screen for all MKVs, and then return to XBMC when the video is stopped. Really awesome workaround and it works perfectly!

My dad is thrilled with the new HTPC. +1 for XBMC!!!

|JuiceZ|

12-06-09, 07:56 PM

six_storm

12-06-09, 08:30 PM

Or you could have just installed XBMC live and used the VDPAU gpu acceleration :D

I could have and would have . . . if it were my own system. Since it's my dad's HTPC and he lives 30 minutes away, I wanted it to be stable and easy enough to mess with in case we had to work something out over the phone ;)