Time to switch to MediaPortal from MCE?

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Time to switch to MediaPortal from MCE?

sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#93164 15-Nov-2011 08:51

I've been a Win7 Media Center user for a couple of years now and have nothing but good things to say about it. That is except for the painful WTV container format which makes it so difficut to do anything with!

What I really want to achieve is the ability to stream my Recorded TV (Freeview|HD) to my iPad. I've tried Air Video and Stream to Me which work fine for AVIs and MPGs but can't handle WTV files.

So I find myself wondering if I should install MediaPortal which I understand uses a .TS file format which apparantly AirVideo will support.

Is the new version of Media Portal more reliable than previous versions? I gave it a try a couple of years ago before moving to GB-PVR and subsequently MCE. I canned MP after less than a week of nothing but crashes. If I move to MP will I be able to steam my Recorded TV?

Or if anybody has a solution for streaming h.264 WTV files then I'd love to hear it!

Thanks

cgreenwood

201 posts

Master Geek

#545480 15-Nov-2011 09:28

I use MediaPortal 1.2 and while it was a little bit of a pain to get set up correctly I have always found it to be stable and very useable. I feel your pain with the WTV container, that is the very reason I also gave up on WMC.
I use AirVideo to stream to my iPod Touch 4th Gen and it works flawlessly with .TS files recorded from MediaPortal although I do run them through TS doctor first to clean them up. I use the live conversion with AirVideo and that works great, although for you I suspect that it will depend on your PC.

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#545481 15-Nov-2011 09:29

MP Is very stable these days but streaming broadcast quality 1080i video over wifi to an iPad is a different story altogether. You will need to re-encode it either on the fly or on schedule. I highly doubt the iPad will play the video streams as they are. Check out iPIMP for MediaPortal it does this kind of stuff but last I looked at it, it was pretty unstable.

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geekiegeek

2513 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#545482 15-Nov-2011 09:29

Checkout this plugin - http://code.google.com/p/ipimp/

I use mediaportal and it doesnt crash and works fine. One word of advice - use win7 x86 and not x64. Much better codec support etc. Plus who needs more then 3.5GB of RAM for an HTPC anyway.

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Snowflake

#545485 15-Nov-2011 09:35

i've streamed them fine to a browser, and a windows phone using RemotePotato. They even have iPod/iPad app i think.

http://www.remotepotato.com/downloads.aspx

EDIT: it does a transcode on the video though, not a full stream, but i think you can tweak it behind the scenes

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reven

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#545501 15-Nov-2011 09:58

geekiegeek: Checkout this plugin - http://code.google.com/p/ipimp/

I use mediaportal and it doesnt crash and works fine. One word of advice - use win7 x86 and not x64. Much better codec support etc. Plus who needs more then 3.5GB of RAM for an HTPC anyway.

lol i have 16GB ram in my htpc :) but its also the tv server for all the computer and using RAM drive for live tv buffer.

Dingbatt

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#545518 15-Nov-2011 10:24

The good thing about recent iterations of MP is that it can be installed alongside WMC. There are configuration settings in MP setup that allow it to suppress WMC so that the two will not interfere. However because of the different way recordings are saved (WTV vs .TS), they can not be played by the other.
I use handbrake to re-encode my TS files.
MP is free so you have very little to lose by trying it.

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sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#545549 15-Nov-2011 11:16

Thanks for all the feedback. It definitely sounds like Media Portal has matured and is the way to go.

Can you please confirm the following?

1. [Dingbatt] Will Handbrake will successfuly transcode h.264 .TS files recorded from Freeview|HD to MP4?
2. [cgreenwood] Will Air Video can transcode (with enough CPU power) h.264 .TS files recorded from Freeview|HD?

I assume it does but I've looked at many WTV converters but they won't do h.264.

Thanks,

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Dingbatt

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#545573 15-Nov-2011 11:56

sfrasernz: Thanks for all the feedback. It definitely sounds like Media Portal has matured and is the way to go.

Can you please confirm the following?

1. [Dingbatt] Will Handbrake will successfuly transcode h.264 .TS files recorded from Freeview|HD to MP4?
2. [cgreenwood] Will Air Video can transcode (with enough CPU power) h.264 .TS files recorded from Freeview|HD?

I assume it does but I've looked at many WTV converters but they won't do h.264.

Thanks,

1. Yes. In fact it can even be set to use the m4v container which is iTunes friendly. It has presets for all the major Apple devices, and you can add presets if none of them suit.

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cgreenwood

201 posts

Master Geek

#545712 15-Nov-2011 18:37

[cgreenwood] Will Air Video can transcode (with enough CPU power) h.264 .TS files recorded from Freeview|HD?

Yes no problem with that, I just double checked with the RWC opening ceremony which was in Full HD H264 and with AC3 5.1 sound (obviously this is transcoded to 2 channels by Air Video though).

I record off Freeview|HD (terrestrial), Freeview satellite (in SD) and some Australian channels available ton Optus D1 and all of these recording play back fine through Air Video.

Some caveats though:

I don't know if the resulting playback on the iPod is full HD even though the source file is, I presume so and it certainly looks like it.

Air Video may well behave differently on an iPad.

You may run into problems with the pesky HE-AAC audio format used by Freeview HD, I do some post processing to remove this audio stream or transcode to AC3 for compatibility with my PS3. The only channels that broadcast 1080p on Freeview|HD are 1, 2 and 3 and all three of these broadcast audio in HE-AAC but also AC3.

But as Dingbatt says, MediaPortal is free and can be installed alongside WMC so just give it a try. There is a free version of the Air Video app too.

One more thing, iPimp is not compatible with the latest stable release of Media Portal (1.2.3 I think) so if you want to give that a try use 1.1 or do some research about it first.

sfrasernz

227 posts

Master Geek

#545929 16-Nov-2011 11:09

I installed MP last night and had it up and running in a couple of hours. I've got duplicate channel entries in the EPG but I'll get that sorted. Probably related to my two tuners.

Handbrake worked a treat converting the files to M4V and playback (streamed across 802.11G) to the ipad was seamless.

AirPlay with Live Conversion also worked but buffered every 20-30 seconds. I think this is limited by my Athlon64 X2 5000 CPU. Both cores were pegged at 100% so a faster proc will probably be the answer. I'll test with my i5 computer and will see how that handles it.

All in all it looks like MP is a good solution. I played with a couple of skins but I miss the interface of MCE but we'll get used to it.

Next steps:

Fix EPG Issue
Get Remote Working
Schedule all my favourite shows!
Enable multi-record from a single mux.

CYaBro

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#545936 16-Nov-2011 11:36

sfrasernz:
Enable multi-record from a single mux.

No need to do anything for this, MP will just do it.

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cgreenwood

201 posts

Master Geek

#545937 16-Nov-2011 11:36

IMO "Streamed MP" is easily the best skin, glad you had success.

I had a play with iPiMP last night, very cool. Allows for scheduling recording from your iOS device as well as automatic conversion (via Handbrake) to a Apple freindly format, playback of afore mentioned files AND streaming of live TV. I was very impressed. They have made it look and feel just like an App too, even though it runs via Safari.

thekiwi

295 posts

Ultimate Geek

#546259 17-Nov-2011 05:49

cgreenwood: IMO "Streamed MP" is easily the best skin, glad you had success.

I had a play with iPiMP last night, very cool. Allows for scheduling recording from your iOS device as well as automatic conversion (via Handbrake) to a Apple freindly format, playback of afore mentioned files AND streaming of live TV. I was very impressed. They have made it look and feel just like an App too, even though it runs via Safari.

Yup agree 100% StreamedMP is very professional looking.
Add in
* MovingPIctures
* TVSeries
* ForTheRecord

and you have one sweet system.

PS for Windows Media Centre and the EPG, have a look at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/epgcollector/

With Mediaportal, just dump the XML file into the folder and it all ... just works.