MediaPortal 2.3.0 RC3

A couple of weeks behind schedule, I've installed release candidate 3 of MediaPortal 0.2.3.0. The changes with respect to 0.2.2.0, build 13411, that I was using before, the changes are not that apparent. But there are some!

A long time annoyance with MediaPortal was how to best browse through my music. My music collection is arranged by album. So when looking for some tunes to play, I want to first pick an artist, then one of that artist's albums. Now in that list of artists, I only want to see the artists that actually have albums in my collection, not the artists that only appear in compilations. I found that in this version you can actually build a "view" that does this. See screenshot below for how it's done. Now, next on my wishlist is to have the albums sorted by year of release...

Another change is in the TV series plugin. It's supposed to look real nice, but I'm having some issues because the database is not compatible with the previous version.

I had to re-configure the Web EPG tv guide grabber. If you use digital tv, the tvguide information comes with the signal. If you uses analogue cable tv, like myself, the tvguide has to come from the internet. This grabber pulls the tv guide information from a website, like http://www.tvgids.nl/ for dutch users. It creates a personalized xml file with tv guide data that MediaPortal uses. Since version 0.2.2.0, the grabber that comes with the standard MediaPortal package is excellent. Previously, separate grabbers had to be downloaded to give satisfactory results. Most annoyingly, the station names in the grabber had to exactly match the station names in MediaPortal.

Now, all you have to do is run the Web EPG configuration tool. With the push of a button it gets all your channel names from the MediaPortal channel configuration. Each channel can easily be assigned to a channel in the program guide that the grabber downloads. You can even use different grabbers for each channel.

Once configured, all that's needed is to set the plugin configuration. The plugin is called WebEPG Grabber and in the configuration you can set the days that you want the grabber to run, as well as the time. The Web EPG configuration that's included in the actual MP configuration remains untouched.

The problem with the web based guide, is that the information is only as good as the information on the website.

Of course, by the time I'm done installing release candidate 3, the final 2.3.0 version was released.

Links

Here's two completely unrelated but nevertheless interesting links:

Missing remote has a helpful guide on building a Media Center PC for a little over 1000 dollars. All important aspects are covered, check it out if you're building a yourself a new set.

The other link is to All out Assault, a forum site where Audiogon users display their monstrous audio setups. The absurdness is funny to the point where you almost feel pity for the audiophiles, basically feeding their addiction by throwing tons of money (literally) into their hunt for the ultimate listening experience.

Internet

Using information from internet is what distinguishes a Media Center PC from a harddisk recorder, a Tivo, etcetera.

MediaPortal is constantly finding information from the internet about the media it shows or plays. It gathers tv guide information for watching tv, artist information, related music and cd covers while listening to music, actors with your movies, episode guides with the tv series. And then there's the stuff that you can only get from the internet: Webradio, rss news feeds, movie trailers.

Now, this also means that using a Media Center isn't half the fun when you loose connection to the internet. Dutch readers: By all means - avoid Tele2 as an internet provider. It took the Swedish maffia 10 weeks to move my phone and internet connection.

In my new house I also made some improvements in connectivity. Instead of wireless, my desktop pc and Media Center PC are now hard wired to my ADSL router. That means I got rid of USB WiFi devices not starting up properly. And that I have 100Mbit connectivity between my PC's, or more if I upgrade the router. So I'm set up for some serious nerdmanship...