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windows 7 is something you should consider as it has so many codecs built. And media center in it is great.
Personally I use media browser in media center along with MPC-HC. Keeps my movies organized, gives me cover art, launches MPC-HC seamlessly and plays everything. Quick and easy and good quality. I have over 300 bluray rips working great.
Let me elaborate.
I'm building more a media player than a HTPC. I'm building it for my son's room, as I'm sick of cleaning DVDs + I want to play bluray rips. It needs an easy interface, something that my wife and kid can use. (and when I say wife and kid I really mean JUST THE WIFE)
Unfortuntately it seems there is no perfect solution. Media center + media browser comes close but if I use subtitles I loose hardware decoding. I think media portal is better if only because of hw decoding.
I tried MB+MPC-HC but when I play video I have to close MPC to get back to MB.
Go with Mediaportal regardless of what OS you use.
Since you are just playing stuff you already have ripped I think XBMC would be your best option. You can customize the menus to take out everything they wont use. You get your subtitles as well. You didn't specify the spec's of the system. Is this an atom powered box where you need DX hardware decoding?
[ 24.542684] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 61
[ 24.544295] lirc_mceusb: Windows Media Center Edition USB IR Transceiver driver for LIRC 1.90
[ 24.544297] lirc_mceusb: Daniel Melander <[email protected]>, Martin Blatter <[email protected]>, Dan Conti <[email protected]>
[ 24.998728] lirc_dev: lirc_register_driver: sample_rate: 0
[ 25.003733] lirc_mceusb[2]: Topseed Technology Corp. eHome Infrared Transceiver on usb4:2
[ 25.003797] usbcore: registered new interface driver lirc_mceusb
An MCE remote should just work out of the box I believe. It's been a while since I set mine up, but that seems to be the case.
Try the command 'dmesg | grep lirc'. You should see something like this if your IR receiver is detected and working:
Code:[ 24.542684] lirc_dev: IR Remote Control driver registered, major 61 [ 24.544295] lirc_mceusb: Windows Media Center Edition USB IR Transceiver driver for LIRC 1.90 [ 24.544297] lirc_mceusb: Daniel Melander <[email protected]>, Martin Blatter <[email protected]>, Dan Conti <[email protected]> [ 24.998728] lirc_dev: lirc_register_driver: sample_rate: 0 [ 25.003733] lirc_mceusb[2]: Topseed Technology Corp. eHome Infrared Transceiver on usb4:2 [ 25.003797] usbcore: registered new interface driver lirc_mceusb
If that looks okay, post the contents of the file '/etc/lirc/lircd.conf'.
D'oh! Didn't read back in the thread and was thinking of a different one.Grep? I'm running this on windows 7
Because of this thread I installed XBMC, but I can't for the life of me get my MCE remote working. Solution seems to be to custom code some XML configuration? Seems like something that should work out of the box no?
I also don't know how to get all the album art and DVD covers to display, can't seem to find the correct documentation to get the whole thing working.
I like the UI so it's a shame that I don't know how to get the rest of it working properly.
XBMC, in yet another of it's moronic failings
XBMC, in yet another of it's moronic failings, doesn't support the MCE remote fully. It's only halfed assed which mean it's a total PITA to get working using something like EventGhost which is one of the many reason I tell people not to use it. It's a crappy app.
Oddly enough an MCE remotes is fully supported in XBMC under Linux.
I installed mediaportal but it also does not seem to have the nice visualizations XBMC has out of the box. I also can not get it to open .iso files. I have added the extension and they show up in the list, however I get a failed to mount error when trying to play them.
I was referring to visualizations for playing music. I find the MovingPictures UI in Media-portal to be much better than XBMC's covers and fanart, with the exception of not being able to use any sort of folder organization. For example, not being able to keep ISO's in a seperate folder from MKV rips, or keeping non TV series types of content like comedy series in a sub-folder so as not to show a listing of the series mixed in with the rest of the movies.Are you talking visualizations like for playing music, or the UI? If it's the latter, download StreamedMP, if it's the former, can't help you there as I don't play music on my HTPC. For playing ISOs, make sure you have Daemon Tools Lite installed, go into your Mediaportal Configuration and there should be a setting for mounting virtual drives and specifying where your DToolsLite.exe is, just point it to where you've install Daemon Tools and everything should work fine.
I was referring to visualizations for playing music. I find the MovingPictures UI in Media-portal to be much better than XBMC's covers and fanart, with the exception of not being able to use any sort of folder organization. For example, not being able to keep ISO's in a seperate folder from MKV rips, or keeping non TV series types of content like comedy series in a sub-folder so as not to show a listing of the series mixed in with the rest of the movies.
I'm not quite sure I follow, I have everything in my collection organized just fine and Mediaportal recognizes everything. I've got a folder called Movies, with each movie having it's own subfolder, and I've got a folder called TV w/ each Series having it's own subfolder, with season subfolders inside that. You do know to use TVSeries to organize/pull data for the tv shows right? MovingPictures is for movies only. Both are installed with StreamedMP. You can set folder paths in both plugins, so I don't see why you couldn't have a folder for MKV rips and a folder for ISO's and have it work, unless you're talking about having all the ISO's (TV + Movies) grouped together and same for MKVs, in which case, I'd suggest a better form of organization.
IIRC, neither XBMC or Boxee support hardware decoding in Windows XP. You have to use Vista, 7, or LInux for that. I use Boxee and its pretty easy to use.
Daniel
XBMC does seem to be a bit superior for Music though, but I'm sure a nice plugin will come around for media portal eventually.