http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress The trials and tribulations of building a media PC! Tue, 25 May 2010 14:59:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en So, I've not updated this blog in quite some time. Why is that? Well, after some time with Mediaportal, I moved to using Windows Media Centre instead. So why switch? Well, the key reason was reliability. Whilst MP was certainly fully featured and looked great, there were a few too many ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=30 As you may have read elsewhere on this blog, I've been using a customised tswriter for the EPG data - it essentially reads the data that Sky broadcast. [ad#square] Recently however, some channels started going wrong. Most annoying was Channel 4- I just had no data for it! Running TVServer config showed ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=28 [ad#square] The Mediaportal team recently released version 1.0.2 - this contains a host of new bugfixes (many of which were around the installation area of 1.0.1) so it's well worth updating. Visit the Mediaportal site to download this update. http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=27 Retrieved an old 4x20 LCD display I had for a previous project, so my next project is to try and hook it up to Mediaportal! [ad#square] The Scott Electronics BPP 420VY display is a very simple serial driven device (as all the electronics for controlling it are on the display itself) so ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=26 I've just finished setting up the My TV Series plugin, along with the StreamedMP skin. The new skin is very slick looking, with lots of nice dark grey and some nice animation touches. The WAF is diminished slightly due to the lack of MePo and it looking like "some executive loft ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=25 Up till now, i've been using the XMLTV EPG. This basically downloads tv listings from the Radio Times and formats them in the open XMLTV standard for import into MediaPortal. This works ok, apart from the fact that a lot of channels don't actually get listings in the Radio Times ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=24 Well, I should apologise for not having updated the blog for a little while. The truth is that a) I've been a bit busy recently, and b) Mediaportal and the PC are, as a general rule, working very well day to day! [ad#square] Around Christmas, Team Mediaportal released the final version 1 ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=23 [ad#square] The Mediaportal team have today released RC4! I'll try and get it installed shortly. Thanks in advance to all the team for their hard work! http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=22 I've recently started playing around with another great looking Mediaportal plugin - the Last.FM Radio plugin. [ad#square] If you don't know what Last.FM is, then in essence, it is rather similar to "Pandora". You listen to music, tell it what you like, and it will recommend other artists and tunes you might ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=21 [ad#square] Spotted on a couple of forums, channel 5 ("Five") is now broadcasting FTA so can be picked up on the PC at long last! Unfortunately, it's not as simple as just tuning to the FIve i'd already added to my EPG in preparation though, as it's on a different frequency! So to ... http://www.puffle.co.uk/wordpress/?p=20