Installing MediaPortal

Since the final, stable MediaPortal 0.2.3 release is out, I decided to do a fresh install and blog a couple of tips and tricks.

Installing or updating is pretty straightforward. I always check the instructions on the wiki, I noticed these change every now and then. I renamed the mediaportal folder and uninstalled MediaPortal with Control Panel -> Add/remove Programs.
Running the Setup exe-file, the installer first requires agreement to the GNU license under which MediaPortal is distributed. Then it asks to install the bundled MPEG-2 decoder filters, DScaler and Gabest MPA/MPV. I do, even though I installed these on previous installs as well. The next screens are to identify the installation folder and the start menu folder. Once that's complete, the actual install takes well under a minute. Finally, the closing screen has a checkbox for entering the Configuration tool. I unchecked this, because I first want to copy the old database files to the new installation.

Per the wiki instructions, I copied the following files to the new installation:
- The thumbs-folder. Although I deleted the folder with tv-series banners.
- The input-device mappings folder. Because I made some tweaks in how MediaPortal responds to the remote.
- The database-folder. Here I also deleted the TVSeries database.
- All XML-files in the main folder, except for a couple that I thought were used only with older plugins.

Skipping any configuration, I started MediaPortal. Somehow the configuration of the tv-card was lost, so in the configuration I re-added it and assigned all tv channels to it again. Yes, I still use the built-in tv stuff, I haven't tried the separate tv server yet. I also had to run the WebEPG grabber configuration again, as described in the previous post.

That's it, ready to rock and roll!