Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[kstuart]

Glynor - The site is littered with threads where you state "I'd like to use MediaCenter for TV but..."   Probably one every year.

None of the threads has any resolution at the end.

What are your current thoughts on using MC for TV ?

[Jack Fate 318]

sorry not Glynor,

   but MC worked great until I added a tv tuner then mc stopped working almost every time I stop a recording. Did all was told to do finally gave up. I just restart & move on

[astromo]

Also not glynor but for mine, MC does deliver as a TV platform.

Admittedly there have been a few bumps along the way that I've been able to resolve through my own efforts with assistance from the forum and Yaobing. I've experienced and observed more than one example of the key to a problem being to determine whether the root is hardware or software. I think it's human nature to blame software first off because its the user interface.

Patience, persistence and a preparedness to try out alternate solutions do make a difference.

My top pick along these lines:

Glynor - The site is littered with threads stating "I'd like to use MediaCenter for TV but..."

is to integrate and automate the EPG function for Australia to the same standard as the US functionality.

Kudos to the J River team for providing "enabling" functionality (i.e. XMLTV) to make things happen and kudos, as well, to fellow forum contributors that have now seen my case arrive at:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=67992.msg558511#msg558511
but the experience of this user:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=81875.0
show that even what I think is straight forward, is not intuitive to others.

Wider reach of MC TV will depend on fundamentals such as the EPG functionality. While ever it involves more than click> Next> click> Finish, the ground level user base will continue to struggle I expect. Please don't think I'm sounding harsh because I recognise the difficulty of dealing with the multiplicity of standards that are out there on the global TV stage. I think MC wins hands down as a single media platform, on so many levels. I'm very happy that I don't have to deal with the standard product coming from Micro$oft...   

[Matt]

I've used MC as my only TV (I'm a cable cutter) for years.  It might be the part of the program used most in my household, measured in hours.

I never watch live, only recorded or time-shifted.  It's great for me in this usage pattern.  I especially love watching football in the home theater (JRiver audio engine, madVR, skipping all the ads, 9' screen, etc.).

My kids watch PBS shows on a Library Server Client or on a tablet with Gizmo most every day.  This works great as well.

TV is appliance quality for me.

However, I'm also not Glynor.

[astromo]

I've used MC as my only TV (I'm a cable cutter) for years.  It might be the part of the program used most in my household, measured in hours.

I never watch live, only recorded or time-shifted.  It's great for me in this usage pattern.  I especially love watching football in the home theater (JRiver audio engine, madVR, skipping all the ads, 9' screen, etc.).

My kids watch PBS shows on a Library Server Client or on a tablet with Gizmo most every day.  This works great as well.

TV is appliance quality for me.

However, I'm also not Glynor.

Agreed, MC was bought for audio but it didn't take long for it to be the TV. Now all my TV really does is work as an over sized monitor.

[kstuart]

This is all good stuff.... and I see I used the wrong grammar in the OP (now fixed), and didn't explicitly state that the threads were started by glynor !

So, I am curious if he has changed his mind.

[We have also just recently "cut the cord", since for the first time, we've moved to an area that has OTA digital channels... I increased our Internet bandwidth, and we are trying the Roku 3 - mostly to have some sort of real-time channel like CNN International... so far MC18 has been an entirely adequate DVR... and we've used some sort of DVR going back to the 80's, with VCRs doing timeshifting...]

[gtgray]

I've used MC as my only TV (I'm a cable cutter) for years.  It might be the part of the program used most in my household, measured in hours.

I never watch live, only recorded or time-shifted.  It's great for me in this usage pattern.  I especially love watching football in the home theater (JRiver audio engine, madVR, skipping all the ads, 9' screen, etc.).

My kids watch PBS shows on a Library Server Client or on a tablet with Gizmo most every day.  This works great as well.

TV is appliance quality for me.

However, I'm also not Glynor.

You are the wrong guy in your role to be a cable cutter. You should use cable on your product. Certainly you can expense it. While you have your TV developer doing much of the TV stuff you still need to understand the TV experience that is the most diverse available in your local market. I have both terrestrial and cable card with a Ceton. My provider is Comcast but it is only a matter of time that the Comcasts and Verizons of the world lock down there cable card content with copy once flags.

As you grow you have to start to think about what is not and never has been in JR DNA. By that I mean support for copy protected content. I have no idea how many license you sell but there must be someway to adjust the business model to support Cablecard labs certification. The day Comcast locks down is the day I am back to WMC. My brother who buys the next tier up from Comcst which is not really premium content won't bother with MC for TV as too many of the channels in that tier are protected.

[cncb]

When I tried MC18 for TV recording there were a few client issues that ruined it for me.  There is also no indication when or why a recording fails or when there might be a conflict.  A big one for me is also the lack of a Windows service for the recording engine since currently if the main app happens to crash it takes out the recording process as well.  But I am also not glynor...

[BradC]

I find that TV playback in jriver is no where near ready to replace 7MC for general consumption.
Current issues include:

crash on stop
strange behaviour with zones (like display disappears into another zone in theater view, and no way to get it back)
remote button mapping awkward (not consistent with 7MC)
slow channel change
slow timeshift behaviour (jump is very slow compared to 7MC)

[glynor]

Well, lookie here.  I am glynor.  I hadn't seen this thread.

Haven't tried it in a while (very early in MC18's lifetime).  I have two HD-PVRs and two digital cable boxes.  Therefore, MC isn't currently an option, until it can blast through my USB-UIRT using zones.  Still (stuck) using SageTV.

The second Yaobing adds the ability to control my two cable boxes independently, I'll be giving it a whirl again.