Good write up on how to download tv shows automatically and move into VMC:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/02/24/ho ... media-cen/

I got a chance to test it out last night and pretty neat

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I started this little project of mine about 2 months ago, with the goal being to find the perfect Media Center Software to use as the main interface on my HTPCs. I must say it has been a very interesting ride. Ironically, if you go back to my original posts my initial reaction was to write off VMC. However, I would say at this point in time VMC came out being the winner in my book. More on that in a moment, but let me take a step back and explain my current setup:

Current Setup
- MSS (4x1TB) with TR4M (2x1TB). This is where all my media is stored and streamed throughout the house
- Desktop PC - Quad Core, Vista x32. This is where I do a lot of my software testing. Also, this is where I will do any ripping/encoding of my media files before I transfer to my MSS.
- HTPC (x2) - Vista x64, Radeon 4670 GPU. One HTPC has a Blu Ray/HD DVD drive, the other does not. One connected to my family room tv and one connected to my bedroom tv, all via HDMI. Logitech diNovo Mini used as main keyboard/mouse, but have been using MCE remote as well. Purpose of HTPCs is primarily to stream content from my MSS to my tvs. Browsing the web and light gaming is secondary.
- Various other extenders scattered throughout the house (Xbox360, AppleTV, PS3, and PCH)
- Devices connected via Cat5e/Cat6 network
- Currently I am not doing any live tv recording, but this is something that may be in the very near future, especially considering my Cable Box DVR just busted and I lost all my recorded shows.

One question I get asked frequently is why not just use a dedicated media extender (PCH, AppleTV, etc...). The main reason is my frustration with the limitations of the extenders (whether that be file playback, GUI, etc...). That is not to say that an HTPC is perfect, as in many cases there is a higher upfront cost as well as required maintenance/troubleshooting, but the sky is the limit as to what you can do.

So back to my original comment on VMC, what changed? When I first tested VMC I was very underwhelmed. I wanted Wow, customization, decent selection of online content, and at face value every other MCS beat VMC to the punch. What I came to learn is that the other MCS' required more work and a higher technical know how to really get the most out of them. With VMC I found that it just worked out of the box with minimal effort, no figuring out what build you were running with, no convoluted setup process, no digging through tons and tons of threads on forums, it just worked. One of my main goals was to have a product that had a high WAF, so as much as the Wow factor was important (especially for the inner geek in me ) a simple/easy to navigate interface that just worked really took front and center. With all this though I was still not sold on VMC until I came across two plugins that changed my view, MediaBrowser and SecondRun. Even though I was willing to sacrifice some of the Wow/customization factor, having a smooth looking interface for my videos/tv shows that used fanart, metadata scraping, and some sort of coverflow view was still important. MediaBrowser came to the rescue. It handles all my Videos/TV Shows under one interface, is easy for my wife to navigate though, allows me to customize the view, and simply looks great. My other gripe with VMC was a lack of online content, particularly Hulu and Apple Trailers. SecondRun is currently addressing this. It is still in early beta mode, but from my initial experience it shows a great deal of promise and may easily get VMC to the top of the class among the MCS.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not knocking any of the other MCS'. Far from it as each MCS has its strengths and weaknesses. The fact also that most of these programs are free and developed by people on their own time is simply amazing, and I commend all the developers. I will still continue to tinker around with each program, so there is always the possibility that another MCS will overtake VMC on my HTPCs, but for what I need right now VMC fits the bill. Here is a brief summary of a few items/roadblocks that has kept me from using other MCS':

XBMC - really like this program and it has a great support forum, probably the one program I would use as an alternative to VMC. Does not support MCE remote out of the box (need to program or use something like event ghost). Does not support hardware acceleration in Windows (my movies still play fine but it bugs me that I built a power efficient HTPC only to have the CPU maxed out every time I play one of my 1080p mkvs, probably me just being nit picky). Does not recognize the Z drive (I would need to reassign a letter to my HPSERVER music path)
SageTV - only program that I am having trouble getting smooth playback in Vista x64, need to investigate further. Navigating through menus is a little clunky (I am sure I could customize, just haven't had time)
MediaPortal - takes way too long to load using the StreamedMP skin. Seemed like a lot of work just to set up. Wants to use its own sql database for movie info which defeats the purpose of having all my metadata stored on my Server.
Boxee - same issues as XBMC. Buggy as still in Alpha mode
Meedios - took me days just to get media to import properly. Slow interface. Gave up on this one
GB-PVR - minimal bells and whistles, no fanart (although possibly in the works via MyVideos, etc...)

I would also like to point out that there is a chance I am missing some great features and maybe there are solutions to some of the problems I came across. I am by no means a pro when it comes to this stuff, just something that came to be a hobby of mine so I thought I would share my experience.

I have some updated screenshots (mostly of VMC and XBMC) that I will post shortly. I will also try and repost a summary I was working on (I was working on it when one of the outages occurred on the forum, so I lost it I have learned my lesson, I started writing this post a few days ago and kept hitting SAVE )

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Just updated some screenshots for the VMC and XBMC posts on the first page of this thread. Also added a brief summary to the first post.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Looks like Hulu strikes again, knocking out another 3rd Pary App - MyMediaPlayer. It is quite a shame that all the time and hard work these developers have put into this project is just getting thrown to the curb.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Wow, Damian! I just discovered this thread. You have done a lot of work assemblying material that will help me a lot when I get the time to tackle the MCS (your term) project head-on. Thanks!

I recommend you do a blog article on this thread so people who bump into your blog will see that they should go here for a good summary of MCS ideas, uses and reference material.

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

Yeah, this is one of the threads that almost got me kicked out of the house!!! I actually have off tomorrow so hopefully I should have a chance to add a post or two to the blog (finally bought a new receiver so gonna get that set up. I made mention in some other thread back in October regarding a Pioneer receiver I purchased. Well as of today that receiver is still busted, I have not gotten my money back, I have a complaint filed with the BBB, and most likely I will be taking the company to court (benefit of having a sister who is a lawyer), but that is a story for another day...). One thing I would like to do with the blog is build off of this thread (as you mentioned) and go into a little more detail on some of the plugins that really take some of these programs to the next level. Adding that info to this thread I believe would just become information overload (if it isn't already).

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Looking forward to your blog entries on this. Should be good reading and a great learning opportunity for me.

_________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle - Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)

This has been a great thread - thanks! You have been tackling the issue that has been consuming me for a couple years - just never had the time to do the work you put into this.

I'm trying to get Media Browser to play my movies but get an Transcode error when trying to play the movie on the Xbox 360 Media Center (I just get a black screen on the HTPC). I saw somewhere mention of Daemon Tools, but I cannot find it again (maybe it was for something else).

My movies are on the MSS and were joined from VOB files into MPEG files. Using MyMovies works great on the Xbox, but Media Browser looks so much better, I want to use that.

What am I missing/doing wrong?

I'm using the VF folder option to see the movies on the server through the Xbox.

Thanks.

_________________
---===[ Scott ]===---

What version of Media Browser are you using? I think the latest version has a separate config form where you can set up/adjust the daemon settings as well as using Transcode360

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I'm using version 2.0.9.0.

I think I found the configuration! I kept looking for it in Media Center for the configuration. Going to install that and set it up today.

Thanks!

_________________
---===[ Scott ]===---

Great, if it works report back. I have an Xbox360 but something happened with my VMC where the extender mode does not work, so I cannot test out. I would probably have to reinst7all Vista on my pc to fix, but it isn't that important to me so I will probably jsut wait until Windows 7 comes out.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Well no luck yet. After installing Daemon Tools and Transcode 360, I get an error "MediaExtenderEnvironment" object link error (or something like that) and Media Browser exits (this is on my Xbox 360).

On my HTPC (where everything is installed), I continue to just get a black screen when I try to watch a movie.

So, still need more investigation.

_________________
---===[ Scott ]===---

Hmmm. On your HTPC Transcode 360 should not matter, so I guess only the Daemon Tools if you are playing ISOs. What codecs do you have installed and what operating system are you using? I having been playing 1080p mkvs and vob (Dvd structre) via MediaBrowser on both my 32 and 64 bit HTPCs

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

For the movies, I ripped them into VOB files and then (to make them work with MyMovies), I joined the VOBs into one large MPEG file (copy /b command). This worked great for MyMovies, but now I'm wanting to switch to Media Browser.

So, I re-ripped a movie into DVD structure/VOB and it works great on the HTPC

I went over to the Xbox Media Center and tried to play the same movie and got the "broken MediaCenterExtender environment" error again

I haven't loaded any special codecs - so running standard Vista Home Premium.

_________________
---===[ Scott ]===---

I would probaly try posting on the mediabrowser forum, I just scanned through and looks like a fewe people have had problems with extenders. How do you like Mediabrowser over myMovies? Like I mentioned earlier MediaBrowser is what changed my mind about Vista Media Center.

Also, don't know if you have a chance to try out MetaBrowser (http://www.mediabrowser.tv/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1119). Little clunky, but you can use this to get fanart. I have then been using MediaScout (http://www.mediabrowser.tv/index.php) to pull in my tvseries artwork. This is what I use, and still use myMovies to get the coverart (MetaBrowser gets the coverart as well, but I like myMovies because I can get the Blu Ray covers). The neat thing about MediaBrowser is that it will grab the coverart/fanart automatically when you run, but using MetaBrowser which creates the local meta data allows the movie to load faster.

Oh yeah, one other neat thing I am doing also is running a program that downloads hd trailers that I can view in MediaBrowser. The link is here (http://www.mediabrowser.tv/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=686).

I plan on doing a write up on MediaBrowser, so let me know if you have any success with the Extender/Xbox portion so I can add that in as well. Sorry I can't help much with that, as I mentioned before I am having problems even getting my xbox to run in extender mode.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin