Just pointing out that, without any details, a comment like this:is not a feature request.
If anyone has old requests pending, use the threads to discuss them, arrive at a very short list of specifics that everyone agrees on, and we'll consider them.
OK - I'd done some TheaterView comparison theads a while ago and since then both MC and competitors have moved on. There are a couple of good comparison products that can be used to check what features are available in the industry including the open source Team Meda Portal (
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/features.html) from which I've extracted the following features and
added my own comments / comparisons with MC for what it is worth! I'm not saying that these are features I want (I've already listed my wish list above) but these are the sort of things currently being offered:
General Create your own skins, or choose one of the available skins!
- LimitedMediaPortal can easily be extended with extra plugins
- NoYou decide which keys you want to use for which actions
- NoInternal support for several remote control (streamzap, MCE, redeye, winlirc, hauppauge, FireDTV)
- YesWindowed and fullscreen support
- Yes My TV Supports analog TV, DVB-C, DVB-T, DVB-S and ATSC
- TV, DVB-T, ATSC but no DCB-C or DVB-SHDTV and AC3 support
- YesSupport for multiple tuners
- YesRecord, watch, and timeshift Live TV
- Yes but not in native DVR-MS format for DVBAdvanced recording scheduler:
- No (can do some limited stuff from StdView)- Record once
- Record now
- Daily o Weekly
- Weekdays (Mon-Fri)
- Every time a program appears on this TV channel
Timeshifting,Watch, Pause, Rewind, FF, RW Live TV
- YesAdvanced recording management:
- No- Handle conflicts
- Set recording priorities
- Quality settings / recording
- Transcode to WMD, XVID or MPG
- Diskmanagement auto deletes old and/or watched recordings
TVGuide:
- No- Grab DVB-EPG & MHW-EPG directly for DVB
- Supports XMLTV
- Colors for genres
TV Guide search
- NoTV Channel grouping
- NoSupports over > 10000 channels
- Yes / Who Cares!Auto channel tuning
- YesNormal OSD (On Screen Display during movies/tv)
- YesSpecial ZAP OSD (Shows description of what is playing currently on TV)
- NoSupport for Teletext
- No?Standby control to put your HTPC sleeping. It will awake when there a recording needs to start
- No My Video / MyDVD Play any movie your PC has a codec for (divx, mpeg, matroska,...)
- Yes A++++All your movies will be stored in MediaPortal's video database
- Yes A+++++View your movies by actors, genres, year, title
- Sort Of (you can set up custom view schemes but you have to set them up and manually populate the data)Sort your movies by actors, genres, year, rating
- Sort Of (you can set up custom view schemes but you have to set them up and manually populate the data)Automatically retrieves video art & info from IMDB
- NoStacking/unstacking if your movie consists of multiple files
- NoInternal DVD player with menu's (you can also use an external DVD player)
- YesOn Screen Display (OSD) for: Pause, Rewind, FastForward, Stop, Mute, Bookmarks, Switching Audio Streams/Subtitle languages...
- YesResume from playback on next play
- Yes My Pictures - Not really used MC T'Veiw to much for these...Watch your pictures/photos
- YesSlideshow support with nice transitions
- YesZoom in/out, rotate pictures (rotation is remembered next time)
- ?Pause, previous/next picture
- YesDelete picture(s)
- ?Background music, either songs from my music, or radio from my radio
- YesAuto thumbnail generation
- YesSort in Name, Date, Size
- YesView in List, Icon or Big Icon display
- YesKen Burns effect slideshow
- ?Filmstrip view
- ? My Music View your music by artists, albums, genres, top100 or plain songs
- Yes A+++ (setup via StdViewSort your music in many ways like tracks, genre, filesize, artists, album,...
- Yes A+++ (setup via StdView)Use visualisations from Windows ?Media Player 10
- ? but has own VizLoad, create & save playlists (.m3u, .pls, .b4u)
- YesAutomaticlly gets album art & info for all your albums
- YesAutomaticlly gets artist art & info for all your artists
- YesView by list, icons, and big icons
- YesShuffle, repeat, FF, RW, pause,...
- YesMusic ratings
- YesFavorites
- YesParty shuffle mode
- YesSearch music for specific songs
- YesDisplay all your favorite songs in one screen
- YesUtilize Winamp, Foobar or iTunes plugins for music playback
- ? not sure why you would want to My Radio - NoListen to your favorite radio stations (FM, DVB or internet stream)
Auto tuning (FM)
Logo's for each radio station (manual process)
Supply a friendly name for each radio station
Internet radio station streaming (ASX or Shoutcast)
Support for external radio tuner applications
Auto start listening to your selected radio station when MediaPortal starts
My weatherShow the latest weather information
- YesSupport for multiple cities
- Not really - but you can change itCurrent temperature, 3 Day Forecast
- YesTemperature (in degrees C/F)
- YesUV Index, Humity (%), Wind (mph/kph), etc
- YesSupport for live images from internet, like:
- No- Satellite images
- Temperature images
- UV Index images
- Winds images
- Humidity images
- Precipitation images
More features! Launching external programs like:
- Can Add Button- Games
- Emulators
- Email application
- Internet Browser
- IRC client
Burner let's you burn all type of files and folders directly to CD-DVD from within the MediaPortal interface
- NoShowing RSS news feeds
- YesRead and send mail within MediaPortal
- NoMonitor computer hardware:
- No- CPU temperature
- Motherboard Temperature
- Hard disk Temperature
- Used Memory
- Used Virtual Memory
Allow the PC automatically go to standby/hibernation and wakes it when there is a scheduled recording! Just like a real VCR!
- NoHas different alarm features
- NoYou can even play included games like Tetris or Sudoku!
- NoThis only a small list of plugins & features that MediaPortal offers.
- No PluginsI've not really played with MS MediaCenter but one thing I see is that Blu-ray / HD-DVD Support is being provided via a plug-in from the likes of ArcSoft's Total Media Theater.
Thanks
Nathan