Media Portal - videos / TV

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aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#28455 30-Nov-2008 16:23

Hi!

After I play a video from "My Videos", MP is not able to return to life TV anymore. No error message, but it does not display any picture (black screen - but not maximised, it locks on the page with "recorded TV", etc...)

I reversesed from RC3 to RC2 in an attempt to get rid of this, with no effect.

I have to restart MP to fix it. But if I play a video, it locks again.
Using the remote control you can only restart the computer, not MediaPortal only. Is it possible to add a button / option "restart MP only"?

mobo Intel DH55PJ, RAM: 4GB RAM, Nova-T 500 HD + Avermedia Trinity tuner card, Geforce 520 video, 120GB SSD Sandisk + 640 WD + 1000SG, Win7 Home Prem 64-bit, Media Portal 1.15.0; BTC 9019URF Cordless Keyboard, Panasonic 55" (HDMI cable), HTPC Case Silverstone Grandia GD05B.

askelon

876 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#181249 30-Nov-2008 20:35

Have you tried any SVN's? Better yet did you realise they have just released RC4? I did a reinstall this morning and its working very well.

aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#181256 30-Nov-2008 21:42

I didnot know about RC4. I thought RC3 is the last step before MP 2 release... I did not do a fresh re-install of MP, with scanning channels and movies..., I selected to keep the settings for the next install.

I will give RC4 a try, with fresh install and see how it goes.
Does it still freeze for 20 sec after selecting "My TV" from Home menu?

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#181269 30-Nov-2008 23:11

I think you should try to delete your MediaPortal.xml configuration file and re-configure Mp from scratch.

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thekiwi

295 posts

Ultimate Geek

#182025 4-Dec-2008 14:46

aucklander: Hi!

After I play a video from "My Videos", MP is not able to return to life TV anymore. No error message, but it does not display any picture (black screen - but not maximised, it locks on the page with "recorded TV", etc...)

I reversesed from RC3 to RC2 in an attempt to get rid of this, with no effect.

I have to restart MP to fix it. But if I play a video, it locks again.
Using the remote control you can only restart the computer, not MediaPortal only. Is it possible to add a button / option "restart MP only"?

Ive had this for quite a while. Im using TV Server and a seperate client, and 3 clients thus far do it. If I play recorded TV and then want to watch live ..."most" times it will just pause and then give control back to the remote and like U ... get a black screen in the preview window. Ditto going from Live back to Recorded.

However. Loaded up RC4 this mornig and cross fingers, did heaps of swaps this morning and no trouble yet. Maybe RC4 has fixed something.

PS. What Ive done to date is configure MP to restart on resume from Standby. Then when I go to Standby and resume straight away, MP restarts and I can overcome the problem you mention.

aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#182260 5-Dec-2008 12:28

I completely un-installed RC3 and did a clean install of RC4 three days ago and all appears to be good.
After playing recorded tv or videos, it goes back to live tv OK without freezing. It still takes approx 5 sec, maybe to re-initialise the tv tuner? Does the tv tuner "go off" when watching recorded tv or other videos? What about the situation where you record live tv and watch a recorded tv from yesyerday, or a video... the tv tuner is in use, for the recording, right? It still takes 5 sec after stopping recorded tv and going back to live TV.

The animation on Home screen after you press "My TV" still takes 10-15 sec until live tv shows up on the screen. this showed up for the first time with RC3, I did not have the issue with RC2 or before.

And I noticed something else with RC4 as well: After launching MP, the screen gets blue (the MP home screen background) and I get the "loading progress" on the screen with really huge letters, messages like "Loading fonts..." and "Loading plugins..." and all the other messages usually shown with very small print in a small window at launch (the splash screen?) under previous versions. When the "loading" is finished, the screen goes back to the desktop for a second and THEN live TV kicks in straight away.

It works OK, I mean it is stable as far I can say and functional, but the previous versions did not show this behaviour and I was wondering if it is intended to work like that or is a sign that something did not fit perfectly when installing RC4.

thekiwi

295 posts

Ultimate Geek

#182264 5-Dec-2008 12:33

aucklander: I completely un-installed RC3 and did a clean install of RC4 three days ago and all appears to be good.
After playing recorded tv or videos, it goes back to live tv OK without freezing. It still takes approx 5 sec, maybe to re-initialise the tv tuner? Does the tv tuner "go off" when watching recorded tv or other videos? What about the situation where you record live tv and watch a recorded tv from yesyerday, or a video... the tv tuner is in use, for the recording, right? It still takes 5 sec after stopping recorded tv and going back to live TV.

The animation on Home screen after you press "My TV" still takes 10-15 sec until live tv shows up on the screen. this showed up for the first time with RC3, I did not have the issue with RC2 or before.

And I noticed something else with RC4 as well: After launching MP, the screen gets blue (the MP home screen background) and I get the "loading progress" on the screen with really huge letters, messages like "Loading fonts..." and "Loading plugins..." and all the other messages usually shown with very small print in a small window at launch (the splash screen?) under previous versions. When the "loading" is finished, the screen goes back to the desktop for a second and THEN live TV kicks in straight away.

It works OK, I mean it is stable as far I can say and functional, but the previous versions did not show this behaviour and I was wondering if it is intended to work like that or is a sign that something did not fit perfectly when installing RC4.

That appears to be the "new" loading sequence for RC4.

Sadly Im back to having the intermittent problem of not being able to switch between recorded TV (for example) and live TV ... as after watching the recorded OneNews last night, had to "restart" MP to watch LiveTV. Maybe its a time thing, that when I did my initial tests I was swapping from one to the next without watching any for a significant period of time.

aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#182331 5-Dec-2008 15:52

I had to restart MP so many times in the past... it was unable to switch to live TV, but I was able to play recorded shows or movies. With RC4 it did not happed anymore (fingers crossed!) but I am asking: is there a way to add a menu option in MP like "MP Restart"? This option should launch a .bat file killing MP, waiting 2 sec and then re-launching MP.

Is this possible? I heard about a pluin able to add entries to the Home menu and associate those new entries with whatever executable file you want. Woult that be easier?

I am very keen to use the remote control as much as possible, but restarting MP involves the keyboard... I think the above idea would use the remote control only.

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ChrisPenrose

11 posts

Geek

#182620 7-Dec-2008 18:40

MP close and home from IR
I am using the Hauppauge PCI IR remote with a Logitech 520 control.
I have setup 'Home' and 'Close' softkeys on my Logitech remote.
The 'Home' key takes you back to the main menu OR starts MP if it wasn't running.
The 'Close' just closes MP.

HTPC power on from IR hack
My IR setup is dead when the HTPC is in standby or off.
To get around this I have 'hot wired' the HTPC power switch to my 5:1 HDMI input selector.
This selector also TosLink for SPDIF selection and Coax which I use to turn my HTPC on.

HTPC standby or shutdown from IR
I haven't figured out how to shutdown or standby from within MP yet, so I still have to manually press the power button.
If anyone knows a MP hotkey sequence for this I would be interested to know...

aucklander

477 posts

Ultimate Geek

#182643 7-Dec-2008 21:54

QUOTE:
HTPC standby or shutdown from IR
I haven't figured out how to shutdown or standby from within MP yet, so I still have to manually press the power button.
If anyone knows a MP hotkey sequence for this I would be interested to know...

ChrisPenrose,

I use the Hauppauge remote supplied with the Nove-T 500 HD card. In MP I configured the Power button to Shut Down Windows. When I press the green button on the remote (with MP running), a menu shows up with Shutdown/Restart/Sleep options to select. I cannot use the remote outside MP or to start/stop the HTPC. My IR sensor is connected into the tv tuner card (PCI). I press the power button to start up the HTPC but not to shut it down.

I do not know how that applies to your Logitech 520 remote.

If I press the green button in Windows, I think there is the Vista Media Centre popping up... which I never used.

mthand

148 posts

Master Geek

#182654 8-Dec-2008 00:55

Can you try the PDVD filters instead of the MP filters? I used to have this issue when I used the MP filters for DVD and after watching a movie and/or pushing the stop button, the application could only be visible on the sides of a black 4:3 square and required MP to be restarted. As soon as I changed, the issue went away, as well as any issues I had with aspect ratio (occasionally having to alternate between normal and original).

As for the remote issues, I am using RC2, and so I don't go near the power buttons on the home screen; also I have mine to sleep when idle and wake to record, but the green power button (nova-s 45-button remote) can close MP and then open it again from Windows if it does freeze. I didn't use MP to configure the remote at all, just the Irremte.ini file in C:\Windows. It will interest ChrisPenrose that there is a sys{} command that can be assigned to the power button (or any button) to sleep the PC - I haven't tried it though - and there should be enough documentation here and MP forums to help anyone get this to work.

ChrisPenrose

11 posts

Geek

#182879 9-Dec-2008 00:23

Thanks mthand for the pointer on sys{} commands. I will search MP for definitions.

General info:
Adding a 'Media Portal' application section to Irremote.ini

1. Make a backup of Irremote.ini in C:/Windows i.e. copy/ paste/ rename as Irremote_Orignal.ini
2. Find the [Application] section and add the line:
Media Portal=
3. Find the [Default] section and replace the line starting with GRNPOWER=.. with:
GRNPOWER={run(MediaPortal.exe)}{mode(Media Portal)}
4. Go to the end of the file and add the line [Media Portal]

That is all I did.
If you want to remap additional [Default] keys add them after the [Media Portal] section

What this does is, when you press the GRNPOWER button, MediaPortal.exe is called, then [Default] key mappings are remapped by any defined in the [Media Portal] section (forever in this case).

Obviously I still need to add PC standby and possibly PC shutdown to this section using sys{} commands.

mthand

148 posts

Master Geek

#182882 9-Dec-2008 01:31

From what I can see from my own file, and if memory is kind, the command GRNPOWER={sys(0xF060)} is the one you need, but then you may want to assign a different button to opening/closing the app.

Happy testing

mthand

148 posts

Master Geek

#182883 9-Dec-2008 01:32

Any luck with filter changes, anyone?